Off to the Tomales Bay Workshops tomorrow, where I (and 11 other workshop-mates) will receive tutelage from Howard Norman, author of THE BIRD ARTIST, a novel featuring an artist who murders the village lighthouse keeper in 1911’s Newfoundland. Michiko Kakutani, of The New York Times, calls the book “Bewitching…glows like a night light in the reader’s mind.” Mr. Norman asked that we bring along a favorite work (written in first person), and I have chosen Paul Collins’ SIXPENCE HOUSE, which Publishers Weekly calls “Witty and droll.” The book jacket states: “Paul Collins and his family abandoned the hills of San Francisco to move to the Welsh countryside – to move, in fact, to the village of Hay-on-Wye, the ‘town of books’ that boasts fifteen hundred inhabitants and forty bookstores. Inviting readers into a sanctuary for book lovers, SIXPENCE HOUSE is a heartfelt and often hilarious meditation on what books mean to us.”
Here is a taste:
I have never noticed the view from the Flatiron Building before. Manhattan, if you tilt your head just right, is a strangely compelling piece of sculpture.
“It’s a good thing,” my editor says, “that your book isn’t being published just now.”
“Oh?”
“Because” – he leans forward – “Harry Potter used up all our paper.”
“You’re joking.”
“Seriously.”
“No.”
He looks at me, a little crestfallen. “I’m telling you the truth. There’s two major paper producers for New York publishers, and with a five-million print run of an eight-hundred-page book, well…everybody else has to wait in line.”
I’ll report back next week on the Tomales experience – rumor has it the food is as good as the teaching.
2 comments:
Today I’m sad as I bend to pick the small still bird from the sidewalk. A pink-sided form of the Oregon junco hit the large window and as I hold it in my hand, I’m reminded of how fragile life can be. One minute you are singing and winging along and then tragedy. Beautiful little creature, perfect in every way, who will mourn for you? I do now as I gently stroke your side and hope for better days.
Miz N, it is always sad and disappointing to lose a bird this way. A Cooper's hawk once careened into our kitchen window, leaving the imprint of its entire body against the glass. Miraculously, it survived, only to do it again a few months later. We've drawn the blind a bit since then, and I think it's helped. Poor bird.
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