Adele Griffin

Adele Griffin is a two time National Book Award Finalist and the author of some of our most haunting and unforgettable young adult novels.

Her latest novel is All You Never Wanted.

Last month I asked Griffin what she was reading.  Her reply:

I've got a book of poems I just finished, called Spit Back a Boy, by Iain Haley Pollock. I got to meet Iain a few weeks ago, just knew his work would be thoughtful-- it is. And my friend has me hooked reading the first volume of journals of Virginia Woolf-- this isn't really a book you dive into and forget about the world. I keep the book in the kitchen, it's a tea and read style book. But I can feel her life in quiet moments, in who she meets and what she has for tea....

I am finishing Unbreak My Heart by my friend Melissa Walker, this is a lovely summer getting-over-a-romance story, set on a sailboat, I love Melissa's wry lighthearted style in this book. And I'm about to start the David Foster Wallace biography, Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story, on several people's recommendation. And by the end of the month, I hope I've read May We Be Forgiven by AM Homes and Ask the Passengers by A.S. King. Finally, I need to finish Quiet: The Power of Introverts by Susan Cain. It's so insightful, but I read it slowly, in pieces, and then give myself time to think about it. That's what we introverts do.

Visit Adele Griffin’s website and Facebook page.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Adele Griffin and Edith.

Writers Read: Adele Griffin (June 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue

D.J. McIntosh

D. J. McIntosh’s The Witch of Babylon has been sold in nineteen countries, was short-listed for the Crime Writers Association Debut Dagger Award, and won a Crime Writers of Canada Arthur Ellis Award for best unpublished novel.

Last month I asked McIntosh what she was reading.  Her reply:

Because my second novel turns on the hunt for a rare 17th century book, I’ve turned to a book I first read some time ago written by John Dunning, an author who’s considered a master of the bibliophile mystery. He has a huge following and with good reason. Dunning’s ‘hero’ is Cliff Janeway, a book dealer and ex-cop. I always found this an unlikely combination but Dunning brings Janeway convincingly alive. In The Bookman’s Promise, Janeway takes pity on an elderly woman who claims her family is the rightful owner of a valuable first edition collection of works by the adventurer and historian, Sir Richard Burton. In the best tradition of quest novels, Janeway searches for both the collection and Burton’s mysterious handwritten journal that reveals a hidden secret - the spark that lit the American Civil War. I think history is often best illuminated through novels and Dunning’s book is proof of this. He held me enthralled all the way through.

Almost all my non-fiction reading is research for my novels and it’s why I picked up The House of Wisdom by Jonathan Lyons. The story of several Christian scholars who travelled to the Near East in the Middle Ages, the book documents how Arabic culture and learning transformed western thought. These ideas ultimately fuelled the Renaissance. Far from a staid historical account, this book had me ‘turning the pages’ as the saying goes, as though it was a thriller.

For a pure, engrossing, nail biting, experience I loved Michael Koryta’s The Ridge. I read a lot of suspense fiction and find many can be predictable but Koryta’s writing is superb. He takes a stock suspense character – the hard bitten sheriff with a vulnerable side – and turns him into a memorable figure. The sheriff has fallen in love with a woman who’s now in jail for shooting him. As a big cat preserve is established in isolated eastern Kentucky, people strangely escape what should be certain death. This is just for openers and Koryta’s magic is to make us believe every word.

Visit D.J. McIntosh's website, Facebook page, and Twitter perch.
The Page 69 Test: The Witch of Babylon.

--Marshal Zeringue

Paula Bomer

Paula Bomer is the author of Nine Months (Soho Press) and Baby & Other Stories (Word Riot Press). She is also the publisher and editor of Sententia Books.

Earlier this month I asked Bomer what she was reading. Her reply:

Right now I am reading The Man Who Loved Children by the Australian writer, Christina Stead. I'm a huge fan of Jonathan Franzen and while reading his latest collection of excellent essays, Farther Away, I came across an essay on The Man Who Loved Children. I'm not letting myself read the Franzen essay until I finish the novel, 527 pages of very small type, dense writing. Frankly, I'm finding it challenging but that's not necessarily a bad thing. It's also deeply, darkly depressing, from the beginning onward. There are flashes of humor, but only flashes. In fact, when starting the book I thought "where can this go?" because it starts with the Pollit family already completely miserable. As it turns out, things can get worse and that's what seems to be happening.

Another book I'm reading is the forthcoming couplet of novellas, Could You Be With Her Now, by the amazing indie writer, Jen Michalski. Each novella is startling with bravery and a mastery of language and pacing. Also, they couldn't be more different, which is no small feat- to have such range. I can't wait for more of the world to know about Jen Michalski thanks to Dzanc Books, who will be publishing it very soon.

Read more about Nine Months, and visit Paula Bomer's blog.

--Marshal Zeringue

Judith Rock

Judith Rock has written on dance, art, and theology for many journals, and has been artist-in-residence and taught and lectured at colleges, seminaries and conferences across the United States and abroad. The Rhetoric of Death, her first novel, was a 2011 Barry Award nominee.

Rock's latest novel is A Plague of Lies.

Recently I asked the author what she was reading. Her reply:

When I'm working on a book--just now I'm writing the 4th book in the Charles du Luc historical mystery series--I'm more likely to read nonfiction than fiction. I do most of my reading-for-fun before I go to sleep, and by the end of a writing day, I often don't want to cope with another story... But there are exceptions, and lately I've been reading Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit series and loving it! It's so different from my own stuff and so fascinating, that it's a perfect change of scene. I love the British sense of humor, and also Fowler's wonderful use of language and the arcane and intricate side-issues he lets Arthur Bryant lead the reader--and the often equally astonished Peculiar Crimes Unit--into. Of course, the other reason I love the series is that Bryant is a fount of arcane London history.

As for nonfiction, I mostly read history. Rarely battles and kings history, more often buttons and soup pots and how did they cope with fleas history. I read 17th century history for research as I write. But for fun at the end of the day, I'm more likely to enjoy medieval buttons and fleas. I just finished Margaret Wade Labarge's Mistress, Maids, and Men: Baronial Life in the 13th Century, based on Eleanor de Montfort's household accounts. With wonderful tidbits like the names of her couriers, including Gobithasti.

Visit Judith Rock's website.

The Page 69 Test: A Plague of Lies.

--Marshal Zeringue

David Handler

David Handler’s first book in the Berger and Mitry series, The Cold Blue Blood, was a Dilys Award finalist and BookSense Top Ten pick. Handler is also the author of eight novels about the witty and dapper celebrity ghostwriter Stewart Hoag and his faithful, neurotic basset hound, Lulu, including Edgar and American Mystery Award winner The Man Who Would Be F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Handler's latest novel in the Berger and Mitry series is The Snow White Christmas Cookie.

A few weeks ago I asked the author what he was reading.  His reply:

Don’t laugh, okay? I’m currently reading a children’s book. Or I should say re-reading one. My girlfriend Diana and I were talking recently about the books we’d read as little kids that made a lasting impression on us. Naturally, since the grown-up me has resorted to a life of crime fiction, I immediately mentioned the Hardy Boys. I loved Frank and Joe Hardy when I was a kid. But I was also a huge fan of Freddy the Pig, a nimble and intrepid detective who solved an assortment of barnyard crimes large and small on Mr. Bean’s farm. Freddy’s partner in detection was Mrs. Wiggins the Cow. And his best friend was Jinx the Cat. I remember the Freddy books as being witty and cleverly plotted. And yet whenever I mention my fond memories of them to friends I’m always met with blank stares. Some of them even think I’m pulling their leg. They refuse to believe that there was ever a pig detective, particularly a nimble and intrepid one.

Not so Diana, who was a children’s librarian when she first got out of college. She not only remembered the Freddy series by a gifted writer named Walter R. Brooks, who wrote for The New Yorker, but she discovered that the books are actually back in print after decades of oblivion. And so, to my delight, I can report that I am currently re-reading a landmark work of crime fiction called Freddy the Detective, complete with the original illustrations by Kurt Wiese. Freddy the Detective was originally published way back in 1932, but you wouldn’t know it. Like all classic literature it remains fresh and timeless. It’s also as wry and hilarious as I remembered. Sarcasm. There’s actual sarcasm. I can’t tell you how much fun I’m having re-reading it.

Fans of my Berger-Mitry and Hoagy mysteries often ask me to name the writers who have influenced my work. They’re also curious about where on earth I got the idea for Hoagy’s sidekick, Lulu, who happens to be a basset hound. I always mention Ross Thomas and Donald Westlake as being huge influences on me. I never mention the name Walter R. Brooks. But from now on I promise I will. Because he was there from the very beginning. And so was Freddy.

Visit David Handler's website and blog.

Writers Read: David Handler (October 2011).

--Marshal Zeringue

Barbara Mariconda

Barbara Mariconda is the author of over thirty books for children and teachers; her latest, The Voyage of Lucy P. Simmons, is a middle grade historical fantasy novel, the first in a trilogy published by Harpercollins. She is co-founder of Empowering Writers.

Earlier this month I asked Mariconda about what she was reading. Her reply:

I always have a pile of books beside my bathtub, spend the last hour of every evening up to my chin in warm water, reading. Relaxing. Sometimes, if the book is just okay, I’ll nod off - in fact, you can identify the less riveting books on my shelves by the curled, rumpled pages of titles that have taken a dip in the suds after putting me to sleep.

Two books that have stayed high and dry and kept me awake much later than they should have are Body and Soul by Frank Conroy and Falling Upward: A Spirituality for the Two Halves of Life by Richard Rohr. The first, a novel, written back in the 90’s, the latter, a prophetic reflection on what spiritual maturity means, and the richness that comes with it.

I picked up Body and Soul at a small independent book store in Chapel Hill, N.C. at the recommendation of a helpful, well-read book seller. It’s the story of concert pianist Claude Rawlings, set just after World War II. The story begins with five year old Claude, lonely and isolated, living in NYC with his mother, whose attitude toward the boy is one of not-so-benign neglect. Spending most of his days alone in a basement apartment, Claude becomes fascinated with the rhythm of footsteps on the sidewalk above, the sounds of the building and surrounding neighborhood, a radio that provides company, and an old white studio piano jammed in the back room. This alienated, lonely child develops an extraordinary sense of the power of sounds, and music becomes a vehicle for him to grow beyond the walls that hold him prisoner.

As a pianist myself, what fascinated me was the way Conroy explored the ability of music to nurture the soul and elevate the spirit, and the relationships between artistry, the science of acoustics, music theory, and technical aptitude, while drawing analogies between all of this and the complexities of life. To be honest, I enjoyed the musical aspects of this novel more than the plot, which follows Rawlings into adulthood, still, the musical elements were enough to keep me awake in the tub.

Falling Upward is a must for anyone pushing fifty who’s ever asked, “What’s it all about?” Rohr, a Franciscan priest, is, I believe, a prophetic voice, offering insight and hope. He discusses the tasks of the first half of life – to strive, excel, compete, attain - to define ourselves as successful in terms of societal values, building a secure container that will hold the often difficult second half of life realities. Failure, illness, loss - these seemingly tragic events are actually necessary vehicles for spiritual growth and emotional maturity. What I love about Rohr is his compelling insights into the way of the middle – the often uncomfortable place between the poles of opposites, of black and white, right and wrong – the place where compassion and inclusiveness are born. His writing pushes us beyond religious dogma and the grade-school faith that does not serve us well when life becomes difficult, and toward a richer, wiser, more complex, and ultimately more satisfying mature spirituality in the second half of life. It’s a book to read several times, to savor, to contemplate, in the tub, or out!

Visit Barbara Mariconda's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Barbara Mariconda and Little Man.

--Marshal Zeringue

Yona Zeldis McDonough

Yona Zeldis McDonough is the author of the novels A Wedding in Great Neck, Breaking the Bank, In Dahlia's Wake, and The Four Temperaments, as well as nineteen books for children. She is also the editor of two essay collections and is the Fiction Editor at Lilith magazine. Her award-winning short fiction, articles, and essays have been published in anthologies and in numerous national magazines and newspapers. She lives in Brooklyn, NY, with her husband, two children and three very yappy Pomeranians.

A few weeks ago I asked the author what she was reading.  Her reply:

I recently read Heft, by Liz Moore. The protagonist of this wholly original, moving story weighs 500 pounds and has not been out of his house in years. His gradual emergence from his loneliness and seclusion is set against the story of a teen-aged boy who loses his mother—and who may or may not be his son. The characters were so real, so convincing and so deeply human it was impossible not to love them all, and to wish ardently for their happiness.

I also just finished Edith Pearlman’s Binocular Vision and was thrilled to have discovered this previously under-the-radar writer. Her stories are so complex, subtle, illuminating and powerful—yet they are also compulsively readable, the literary equivalent of a box of bons bons.

Finally, I have been dipping into the Collected Works of William Butler Yeats, a volume I bought when I was a freshman in college in the fall of 1974. There are poems I have been reading since that time and I love them every bit as much now as I did when I first encountered them. And reading a poem I have never read before is like discovering a new star or planet—everything glows a little brighter in its presence.

Visit Yona Zeldis McDonough's website.

Read--Coffee with a Canine: Yona Zeldis McDonough & Queenie, Willa and Holden.

The Page 69 Test: A Wedding in Great Neck.

--Marshal Zeringue

John Shelton Reed

John Shelton Reed is William Rand Kenan Jr. Professor Emeritus of sociology at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and a co-founder of the Center for the Study of the American South and the quarterly Southern Cultures. He has written or edited 19 books, most of them about the American South, and was recently Chancellor of the Fellowship of Southern Writers.

His new book is Dixie Bohemia: A French Quarter Circle in the 1920s.

Earlier this month I asked the author what he was reading.  His reply:

On the floor next to my side of the bed stands an enormous, teetering pile of books that I once began reading, or at least intended to read. The top dozen or so are still alive. Further down are books I abandoned some time ago, but haven’t wholly given up on; further down still are some remembered only faintly, if at all. At the very bottom are some that I fear may be turning to compost.

The bedside books still in play are of two kinds: either I’m in the middle of them and intend to complete them, or they’re the kind you can pick up and read just a bit from. Farnsworth’s Classical English Rhetoric by Ward Farnsworth, for instance, is a guide to rhetorical figures illustrated with examples from great writers and speakers, and it’s not necessary to read it from start to finish. You can dip into it almost anywhere. Even if you don’t care about formal rhetoric, the examples make for fine bedtime reading, and I rather hope that I’ll absorb a few lessons from them.

Also fine for reading a bit from now and then is Drowning in Gruel, a collection of 19 bizarre and delightful short stories by George Singleton, set in the imaginary town of Gruel, South Carolina. One of those stories at bedtime will set you up for some vivid dreams. I’ve read a couple of Singleton’s other books, and wish there were more.

The half-dozen books I’m in the middle of reading are a thoroughly mixed lot, which means there’s usually something I’m happy to spend some time with before turning out the light. John Gunstone’s Lift High the Cross, for instance, is a history of the Anglo-Catholic movement in the Church of England in the years after World War I. That sounds a little esoteric, and it is, but I once wrote a book called Glorious Battle about the movement’s origins and its history up to the 1890s, so I’m probably one of the few who are really, really interested in this book.

My wife and I have a daughter who has married a Texan (one of the real ones, a guy who can wear a cowboy hat without looking ridiculous) and we now have a Texas granddaughter, so we spend a good deal of time in the Lone Star state, and – typical professor – I’ve been reading a lot about it. One of the best books I’ve found on the subject is an oldie by the distinguished geographer Donald Meinig: Imperial Texas: An Interpretive Essay in Cultural Geography (1969). I’m in the middle of it right now.

Another distinctive and amusing Southern subregion is dissected by my pal Hardy Jackson (properly Harvey H. Jackson III) in The Rise and Decline of the Redneck Riviera: An Insider’s History of the Florida-Alabama Coast. It’s almost as much fun as the annual Mullet Toss at the Florabama Lounge. Great photographs.

Hardy’s not the only friend whose book I’m reading. Jason Berry is a loving critic of the Roman Catholic church whose reputation largely rests on Lead Us Not into Temptation, a book about clerical sexual abuse, but he has also written well about Louisiana politics and music. In Render unto Rome: The Secret Life of Money in the Catholic Church he looks at his church’s finances in a book that ought to be ranked right up there with Barbarians at the Gates, Liar’s Poker, and similar books about Wall Street.

Another friend, Curtis Wilkie, was the Boston Globe’s Southern reporter for many eventful years before getting out of practicing journalism (just in time) and going off to teach it. Somehow I missed his Dixie: A Personal Odyssey through Events That Shaped the Modern South when it came out in 2001, but I’m finally reading it and it is a corker.

Michael O’Brien, yet another friend, is a Cambridge historian who has written some seriously heavyweight books about the Old South. Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon is a departure for him: He looks at a 40-day trip taken by Louisa (Mrs. John Quincy) Adams and her young son from St. Petersburg to Paris in 1815. She is a fascinating woman, and the post-Napoleonic War Europe through which she traveled is not a landscape I knew anything about.

Daniel Woodrell is not a friend, but I wish he were. He’s a remarkable writer, whose novels and short stories I’m gradually consuming. Right now I’ve almost finished Woe to Live On, a novel set in Missouri that was the basis for the best Civil War movie I’ve ever seen, Ang Lee’s strangely neglected Ride with the Devil.

Finally, having just finished a book about New Orleans and having lived in the French Quarter for a good while to write it, I have begun to reread John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces, perhaps the first great novel ever set in that strange and wonderful city. I loved it when I read it 25 years ago, and it’s even better now that I know the setting first-hand.

Learn more about  Dixie Bohemia at the Louisiana State University Press website and John Shelton Reed's website.

The Page 99 Test: Dixie Bohemia.

--Marshal Zeringue

Dan Josefson

Dan Josefson has an MFA from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and lives in Brooklyn. He has received a Fulbright research grant and a Schaeffer Award from the International Institute of Modern Letters.

His new novel is That’s Not a Feeling.

Recently I asked the author what he was reading. Josefson tagged three books in his reply:

The Hour of the Star by Clarice Lispector

There’s an intensity to this book that is both frightening and fascinating—it tells too much, is too opinionated, and then it lurches back and places everything in a balanced, almost cosmic perspective. I worry a bit whether the narrator and author are being too dismissive, too cruel to the main character. But then I wonder whether this book doesn’t work like Don Quixote or Pnin, where the character is elevated by surviving her unfair treatment at the hands of the author. Either way, this book is unique and, I suspect, unforgettable. I’m enjoying arguing with myself about it almost as much as I’m enjoying reading it.

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid by Shani Boianjiu

This novel tells of a number of female friends serving the Israeli Defense Forces. It functions more or less like a novel in stories, but those stories are so deeply intertwined that each gains immensely from the others. What I’m enjoying most about this book right now is the rhythm of the voices. Not just the syntax, although that’s very cool, but the pace at which information is presented. There’re all sorts of new and unsettling information constantly interrupting, much of it violent: RPGs, knives, guns, fires, and bullets. But there are also lulls, ruminations, obsession repeated and lingered over. There’s something that feels very intimate and honest about this, the way larger questions loom in the background as the characters struggle to get through their days.

The Gospel of Anarchy by Justin Taylor

For a novel in which a set of concepts and ideals is so central, the descriptions of material reality are pretty amazing here. The way the looks of things are described—whether it’s an old falafel sandwich, a face, a shirt found in a closet, or an image on a computer screen— is stunning, and not only to me as a reader; the main character often seems overwhelmed by what he sees as well. How Taylor pulls this off is a bit of a mystery to me, but I suspect that this is how novels of ideas ought to be written: the ideas so inherent in the images that everything described almost glows with meaning, the way on certain overcast days the clouds will hold the light.

Visit Dan Josefson's website.

The Page 69 Test: That's Not a Feeling.

My Book, The Movie: That’s Not a Feeling.

--Marshal Zeringue

Douglas Smith

Douglas Smith is an award-winning historian and translator and the author of Former People: The Final Days of the Russian Aristocracy and three previous books on Russia. Before becoming a historian, he worked for the U. S. State Department in the Soviet Union and as a Russian affairs analyst for Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich. He lives in Seattle with his wife and two children.

Recently I asked the author what he was reading.  His reply:

If there is one book, or series, that is, I would want everyone to pick up and read it would have to be the Patrick Melrose novels by Edward St. Aubyn. Acerbic, witty, unflinchingly honest and simultaneously heartrending and hilarious, St. Aubyn’s books—Never Mind, Bad News, Some Hope, Mother’s Milk, and At Last, published in the US earlier this year—are without doubt one of the great literary achievements in English of the past decades. St. Aubyn is one of those rare writers who has to be read and then read again and again.

Watch the trailer for Former People, and learn more about the book and author at Douglas Smith's website.

The Page 99 Test: Former People.

--Marshal Zeringue