I know what you read last summer

Pretty sure I've mentioned before my obsession with People magazine, and one of my favorite things they do are those "books you should read for [insert whatever season it is]" features. It isn't so much reading the reviews of the books, but I love the picture that accompanies the whole thing...it will have all the books stacked. For some reason I just love looking at all those book spines in a row; love getting a glimpse about what the actual books themselves look like.

So here is my version, except instead of "books you should read for summer," mine is really a "books I did read this summer" stack. I've talked about all of them except the last 3, so let me just briefly say that The History of Love was creative and endearing and definitely worth reading (if not somewhat confusing to keep track of all the different story lines), Is Everyone Hanging out Without Me was absolutely hilarious and I liked it way more than Tina Fey's, and The Fault in Our Stars was a good effort on what turns out to be very intense subject matter, but I just can't get into YA anymore.

My total for the family summer reading competition was 2024 pages, (earning me $20.24). I beat my sister but not my Mom, but I don't know if anyone's ever beaten Mom. In any case, there were some good reads in that pile. And now it's fall, which means I'll have to see what People magazine says I should be reading. Those book spines are calling my name.
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I finally did it.

I joined.

Emerald City

This was taken on top of the Space Needle and is obviously a horrible picture. Can you say city bangs? I can. Why am I even sharing this picture? I am disgusting.

I feel much better about my appearance in this picture, but you would have no idea I'm in Seattle. Unless you're familiar with Chihuly and his glass and garden exhibit. Which I wasn't. Until going to the Chihuly glass and garden exhibit. In any case, I've been enjoying Seattle and loving the chilly weather and the homeless people and the utter greenness to behold.

Since trips mean planes and planes mean reading on planes, I'll have a few books to report on soon, and I also got the first round layout options back for the interior of book 2, so looking them over will be on top of my to-do list when I get back to the Cleve. So will getting my bangs trimmed.
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Stranger than Fiction...and Funnier, too

I was talking to a friend of mine the other day, one who I grew up with back in Oregon, and she was telling me about the book she's writing. It's about her life, and as she was telling me about some of the events that will be included in the book, I was shocked. Truth is stranger than fiction, everybody knows that--or at least everyone should--and I actually found myself at one point asking her, "He really did that??" when she told me about one of the scenes from the book. I honestly couldn't believe it, to which she quipped that it would not be possible to make this stuff up.

That's why I love real life. It's why I love reading about real life. And I know I say it all the time, but I just love memoirs for that reason. It's so satisfying knowing that what you're reading about really happened. And I think the potential for grand emotions is heightened. Real life has the potential to be more heartbreaking, more inspiring, more joyful, more hilarious, and certainly more unexpected than anything we can make up. That's probably why I'm sixty pages into a new novel right now (I know! I know! What am I doing reading fiction?) and can't seem to get into it but was in stitches when my friend read me the opening pages of her hilarious memoir. Life is just funnier. Now, back to this novel. Groan. (Watch, it will turn around any second and become the best thing I've ever read and I'll be eating crow for days. Which, incidentally, would also be pretty funny.)
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Weekend Totals

4,400 words. That was my total written over the long weekend. Not too shabby. Although it definitely cut into my pages read total (this is the final month of the family contest), which was like 20. Of course that didn't stop me from picking up two new titles while at B&N this weekend. (You know, for all this reading I'm doing.) If I can read the book I just started as well as the two I just bought before the month is out, I'll deem September a literary success. And if I win the family contest, I'll deem this the best summer ever.
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Good, Better, Best

Thanks to a few recent plane rides (and my rainy trip to Toronto) I've got some books to report on. Penny-a-page is in full swing, so July has proven a decent starting month for me. It's on, sibs.

When I first heard about She Matters, my inner soul rejoiced. What a wonderful idea for a book, I thought. The importance of female friendships. The author recounts various friendships throughout her life, although unfortunately only two of them struck me as moving or meaningful in any way. Most of them had me frustrated at the author and wondering why each of her friends seem to end the friendship for the same reason (blaming it on the author's selfishness). It ultimately left me with the impression that she is, in fact, selfish. And this made me dislike her and care less about her story.

I rarely read novels, but I picked this one up because there seemed to be a lot of buzz around it. I confess I did enjoy it. I read it quickly...although that could have more to do with the airport delay that left me little else to do. It seemed pretty unrealistic at times (read: all the time), but I loved that it was so random. I mean, Antarctica? Really? And having the whole thing be a series of letters and emails made for a fun read...very different than your typical book.

I have Will Schwalbe to thank for the gem of July. The End of Your Life Book Club was pure delight. Not because it is cheery on ANY level...in fact, delight is probably the wrong word. It's more that it was satisfying, completely. The perfect combination of literary musings and tragedy, it was just the kind of book I relish. More than that, I really felt like I got to know Will's mother, and I'm so in awe of the kind of person she was. A truly remarkable woman. The chance to follow along as they read their way toward her inevitable death was, in my opinion, truly special.

Bring on August.
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The Read-Through

I did my first full read-through of the manuscript over the weekend. Of course I've been reading/editing for a couple months now, but this was the first reading that happened all in one sitting. And also the first reading since I've had the chapters arranged in their new order.

It went well (although there's a Saturday afternoon I'll never get back), but reading from start to finish like that makes you think, All this effort for something that can be read in a matter of hours? I guess that's the nature of the beast, and why only a handful of people out there are crazy devoted enough to write books.
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Summer Side Job

My Mom began sponsoring a summer reading program years ago. It was just for us kids and had a maximum payout of $50 each, but still. We were being paid. To read. Game on. In those early years of the program, I remember being a bit irked that my much-younger brother was filling up his "completed books" list with kids books. Since we were paid by the page, how was this fair? His pages had only a small fraction of the words my adult pages had. Word count would have perhaps been a more accurate payout method, but pages made more sense. Mostly because they were actually measurable.

This summer reading program, dubbed Penny-a-Page, has continued, such that we still participate every year, even as adults. We're each allowed to pick the 3-month summerish date range that our payouts will be based on, and from there it becomes a bit of a friendly competition. I think I'll go with July-September. I've got some plane rides in there that should help my page total. Did I mention game on? (To this date I have never won. So, there's that.)
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Heads in Beds

Here's why this memoir works. Well, it's fabulous. But more than that, it's an ideal kind of memoir to read. It's not so removed or unrelatable as many memoirs today are (I lived in the slums of some third world country for a year, I was in jail, I climbed mount Everest, blah blah blah.) True that those memoirs can be fascinating, but they have nothing to do with us and our lives. Heads in Beds offers both fascination (more like genuine shock and intrigue) AND accessibility. Relatability. The hotel industry affects all of us. Business trips, vacations, get-a-ways. We all stay there, and we all know nothing about what it's like behind the scenes. It's a dynamite combination.

If I were on Goodreads (I know, I've already admitted that I should be on Goodreads), I'd give it 4 out of 5, only because I did find the swearing excessive to the point of being distracting, but honestly, if you like memoirs and can tolerate some irreverence and more honesty than you might be comfortable with about what actually goes on inside our homes away from home, this book will be a treat. And if you don't believe me, here's a baby brick. Which should help you see it my way.
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To Goodread or not to Goodread

I want to use Goodreads. People tell me I should use Goodreads. Everyone swears by Goodreads. And still I do not use Goodreads. Because, and I'm embarrassed to say this, I don't read very many books. Probably one of the worst things a writer can fess up to, but there you have it. I don't have time, and reading always ends up last on my priority list. Actually I take that back. Playing guitar always ends up last on my priority list. I still remember (because it was only last year) having to awkwardly tell Jake, my guitar teacher, that I was stopping lessons on account of not having enough time to practice. And yes, it kills me that I've lost some skill at the six string, but I did manage to strum out a song for my nephew this weekend while in town for his 4th birthday. Should've Been a Cowboy, one of his favorites. A boy after my own heart.

But back to the books. And the fact that I should read more, which I fully acknowledge. I should also use Goodreads, because after I read a book, I am filled with the desire to share my thoughts with others (read a deliciously revealing memoir on the plane over the weekend that I can't wait to tell you about). I guess where I struggle is the whole "catch up" aspect. If I joined Goodreads, I'd feel a pull to rate books I've read over the years so people would know that I have in fact read more than 5 books in my life. But what an overwhelming undertaking that would be. And most of them not even fresh in my memory. When (if) I do join, I think it's best to just start with now. Just promise you won't judge the piddly number of books I read. Piddly.

And for those of you who are on Goodreads, I'd be curious to know how you manage it. Do you backtrack and rate books you've read prior (even much prior) to joining? Or only the books you've read since joining?
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Should've Been a Cowboy

Tom's first book, The Secret Life of Cowboys, is one of my favorite memoirs, and I honestly don't know why it took me so long to read One Good Horse, but I loved it as well. Maybe not quite as much as Cowboys, but there is something about the way he writes that I resonate with. The simple sentence construction, Tom's calm nature as he moves through life, I really feel like I'm on the ranch myself as I read. More than that, reading these books makes me WANT to be on the ranch.

I also appreciate the honestly with which he writes. Cowboys is all about his dream of owning a ranch, how he gets there, and how he ultimately realizes it might not be for him after all. To spend so much of your life working for something, it takes a lot to tell the world "nevermind." And in Horse, he takes on the training of a colt, unabashedly second-guessing himself the whole way. It's not that his books are downers, it's that I feel what he feels while I read, and sometimes that honesty, even when painful, is refreshing. Honestly, I feel like I've just returned from Montana. And I already want to go back.

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To Sell is Human

I'm long since past the days of reading textbooks, so I confess that the thought of reading for anything other than pleasure causes panic and painful flashbacks. I kid, I kid. Anyone who's read Schooled knows I loved being a student and dreaded the beginning of real life, but now that I'm in it, I do groan when I see informative books on the shelves. Who reads these? I once saw a stat of how many books you could read in your life if you were an average reader (and most of us read far less frequently than the average reader), and the number was disturbingly low. And if I can only read a very select number of books in my life, I certainly don't want to read any that are not for fun, don't make me laugh, and do nothing to help me escape.

So whenever I find myself reading a business-themed book, it surprises me. Even more so when I really enjoy it. Which is exactly what I can say about this book. True that I work in sales already, so it's not like I really needed a lot of convincing about selling in today's world being very different than in eras past. Or the presence of sales-related activities even in non-sales jobs. Or the amount of time we spend trying to move others; to convince people to part with something they have in exchange for something we can give. I already see this and fully believe it. I am the proverbial choir.

Nothing earth-shattering then, but what I loved about this book were the practical examples shared to illustrate each principle, the clear explanation of the ways we can become better and more effective movers in this information age, and the recommended exercises (sometimes very simple) to help us become better attuned, buoyant, and clear. Very readable and incredibly relatable (much like Quiet), it's always satisfying to read a book that gets it right. If you work in sales, manage a team of salespeople, or just want to read a fascinating account of the shift away from the Fuller Brush Man style of selling that was once so prevalent, you should read this book.
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Books I Can't Wait to Read

One of my resolutions this year involves reading more books, so I made a rather large book purchase over the weekend and am now happy to report that I will be reading all of these books in the near future. Man, sometimes I forget how much I love reading. Particularly non-fiction. Especially memoirs. Not that this should shock anyone by this point. Of course it's just now occurring to me that reading all these books is going to seriously cut into my writing time. Le sigh. At any rate, I'll be sure to report back on what I think of the below books.

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