Writers Read: Claire Booth

Tuesday, March 12, 2019

Claire Booth

Claire Booth is a former true crime writer, ghostwriter, and reporter. She lives in California. Her Sheriff Hank Worth Mysteries include The Branson Beauty and Another Man's Ground. The newly released third book in the series is A Deadly Turn.

Recently I asked Booth about what she was reading. Her reply:

I usually have both a fiction and a nonfiction book going at the same time. I’ve tried, but I just can’t read two novels simultaneously. If I do one of each, I find I get the most out of both.

Right now, I’m immersed in the absolutely delightful Dreyer’s English. It’s by Benjamin Dreyer, the copy chief of Big 5 publisher Random House, and it’s a word geek’s dream. You might think it would be a dry lecture on grammar and usage, but it’s not. It’s a witty takedown of pretentious rules and an affirmation of the important ones, like the error of using an apostrophe to make a word into a plural (“For a modest monthly fee, I will come to wherever you are, and when, in an attempt to pluralize a word, you so much as reach for the apostrophe key, I will slap your hand.”)

Dreyer talks about everything from comma placement to dangling modifiers to often-confused words. This is one of my favorites: discreet and discrete (“often mixed up, not only but particularly by the authors of frisky personal ads.”)

I could go on and on, but I’ll leave you to discover the wonders of this book yourself. It’s a must for anyone who loves writing and language.

The other book I’m currently enjoying is Cathy Ace’s The Wrong Boy. Ace is Welsh and has set this book in her homeland. Her joy in this comes through clearly, even though the story itself is dark and layered in menace. Ace has always had a great ability to create really distinct characters, and she does it again here. I’m not finished with it yet, so I can’t weigh in on the ending, but I can say that it’s tightening itself around me like a vise, which I love. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to succumb to its pull and get back to reading!