Once, at the home of a woman who hosted a drop-in book club at her café and was running out of bookshelf space, we were encouraged to peruse novels she’d displayed on her furniture and take as many as we wanted. Is that a great party or what? I picked up a couple of prize-winning novels whose reviews hadn’t quite grabbed me—and if I hadn’t snatched up Ian McEwan’s Atonement and J.M.Coetzee’s Disgrace from Bev’s credenza, I may never have read them, and that (I realize now) would be a shame.

So, if you want to get rid of some books and don’t feel like carting them to a used-book store or donating them to the local school fair, consider a book party. You’ll gain shelf space—and maybe new friends.

I won’t be hosting any such gatherings myself, since I don’t like to part with books I admire (I often pick them up to examine passages for literary technique). By the way, at my neighbour’s barbecue, I chose a book I’ve been meaning to read for a couple of years. The Tipping Point, by Malcolm Gladwell, now sits atop my pile of cherished party favors.

If you have any ideas on what makes a great book party (or some other fun way to share good books), please comment!

I was reminded of that smoky journey when I read a post on Writer Unboxed by literary agent Donald Maass. Maass writes about the power of what’s not there. He’s speaking of characters who aren’t present (as opposed to clouded mountains and horses) and the point of his post is to give writers tips on how to conjure an unmet character, one of them being to show the reader evidence of that character’s existence. One thing Maass doesn’t mention is that the “presence” of a character can be more powerful because they aren’t there.

Just as I was far more aware of the surrounding country because much of it was hidden, a reader may attend more to a character when that character is not wholly in view. The trick, I think, is to make sure there’s just enough revealed to capture the imagination. If, for example, I had been unable to make out the outlines and muted colors of horses and mountains, there would not now be a hundred pictures of that drive through the Cariboo in my digital camera.

The same principle can be applied to writing. I’ve got a character who’s missing (ie., dead) at the beginning of my story, and I’ve decided that if I give the reader a hint of her “color” and the general shape of her character, she will be increasingly intriguing. Well, that’s the plan. Sometimes writing can seem like heading out on a long journey with limited visibility and you gotta keep goin’ even when the smoke gets in your eyes…

Okay, enough with the smoke metaphor. But as I sit, red-eyed, at my computer, there’s a winding, gauzy highway in my mind.

Donald Maass on Writer Unboxed and more on B.C fires

So many books, so little time. I read a lot of book reviews and tend to focus on what’s been published in the past few years. However, I do on occasion pick up a classic I’ve intended to read for what seems like forever and get the job done. I need a push, though. For example, last year, during a conversation about great acting, I mentioned to my daughter what a great job of Miss Havisham Charlotte Rampling did, and my daughter asked, Miss Who? And I explained that Miss Havisham is a famous literary character, one of the greatest fictional spinsters of all time, etc., and it occurred to me that—though I’d read several other Dickens books—I’d never actually read Great Expectations.

Well, I have now. (And Miss H did indeed live up to her reputation). And though I’m halfway through a novel published last year, on my bookshelf sits another classic I’m embarrassed to admit I’ve yet to read: Madame Bovary. I know the bones of the story, and because other writers mention it in their how-to-write-better books, I’ve read passages of Flaubert’s masterpiece but never the actual book. And beside Madame B sits Jane Eyre. I have, in fact, read this novel by Charlotte Brontë—but it was so long ago, I forget most of it. Which means, I suppose, that once I finally read all the classics on my list, I’ll probably have to start all over again. So many books, so little time…

What about you? Are there any lit classics on your must-read list?

And once I’ve read the it, because of my book-to-film interests, I’ll probably rent the movie. Maybe I’ll watch the Hollywood remake of the Swedish one, too, when it’s out—apparently Daniel Craig (a.k.a. James Bond) will play the books’ hero, Blomkvist, which adds a sexy factor though I have to say I like the idea that in the book, Blomkvist is just a middle-aged, frumpy hack. Or so I hear.

But the really great story, the one that I’ve been bringing up at dinner parties and over coffee with friends, does not yet exist on page or screen—though no doubt some big publisher/studio is already working on it.

It’s a tragedy: Larsson died before any of the Millennium books were published. Not only did he suffer a fatal heart attack before he could take his bows, we have to wonder if his $30 million-and-climbing estate went where he would have wanted. Because he died intestate, his father and brother inherited his wealth and his long-time common-law wife, Eva Gabrielsson, got nothing.

But there are rumors she has a big chunk of a fourth book on a laptop. Further gossip suggests Gabrielsson wrote part (or even all) of the trilogy. Oh, it just gets better and better.

As the Globe article points out, reader fascination with the dead author is a huge part of the Millennium publishing phenomenon.

Which makes me wonder: Would the books be anywhere near this big if Larsson was still alive? I like to think so. I need to think so. Because, um, if the author has to die as part of his/her marketing campaign, is the writing life really worth it?

Meanwhile, I eagerly await the story of Stieg Larsson.

Further reading: The Globe on Larsson

The book is a novel, So Much For That, by Lionel Shriver. And yeah, I’m reading it slowly. Savoring it.

The cherries are Bing.

The sun is courtesy of the south coast of British Columbia.

Hope all of you have a lovely place to read slowly this weekend!

Read Slow Reading for Dummies

According to a recent article by Patrick Kingsley in the Guardian, the first person to popularize the term “slow reading” was Lancelot R Fletcher, and Fletcher argues that slow reading is not so much about unleashing a reader’s creativity, as uncovering the author’s. But why should you care about the author’s creativity unless it stokes yours?

An entry on Wikipedia gets this: slow reading is “the intentional reduction in the speed of reading, carried out to increase comprehension or pleasure.” Yes—slower reading will increase your pleasure. (Wikipedia then carries on with this sentence: “The concept appears to have originated in the study of philosophy and literature as a technique to more fully comprehend and appreciate a complex text. More recently, there has been increased interest in slow reading as result of the slow movement and its focus on decelerating the pace of modern life.” I mean, really, it’s wordy writing like that that fosters a longing for 140-word tweets. But, I digress.)

According to Nicholas Carr, author of The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, the Internet is an ecosystem of interruption technologies. These ever-present sources of online distraction are changing the way our brains process information and hence the way we think and communicate. “When we’re constantly distracted and interrupted, as we tend to be online, our brains are unable to forge the strong and expansive neural connections that give depth and distinctiveness to our thinking,” Carr says. Is this true? Is the Internet making us stupid and shallow?

Blogger Tracy Seeley, an English professor at the University of San Francisco, claims the Internet creates “monkey mind.” Her solution is to download the software Freedom, which blocks Internet access for whatever period of time the purchaser chooses. Seeley says the software frees her “from surfing and skittering across the surface of things, which eats up [her] time and makes confetti of [her] concentration.”

I can’t see myself spending more money on software to keep me from the internet access I already pay for.

So, my solution is simpler. Call it Slow Reading for Dummies, or the Idiot’s Guide to Deeper Comprehension of the Written Word: Walk away from the computer and pick up an old-fashioned book. You know, the kind made of paper, with pages you turn by hand. My environmentally-aware friends might grumble, but I figure I read responsibly—I never buy a book that seems a waste of a tree. Besides, if I read only on the internet, I’m probably wasting a good chunk of my mind.

For more on this (yeah, yeah, I know I’m pointing you to online reading but I never said I didn’t value online reading, okay?):

• The art of slow reading on the Guardian
• Tracey Seeley‘s monkey mind
• The Shallows: What the Internet is Doing to Our Brain

Confrontation is more dramatic when we see it building. Escalate, escalate, advises one of the writing books on my shelf. Skilled writers don’t start a scene with the worst thing that could happen. (After all, where do you go from there?) Good writers make readers apprehensive, then ratchet up the tension. For example, our salivating, alcoholic friend almost makes it past the bar—but then his boss appears in the doorway and insists on buying him a drink. And then he has “just one.”

In Elaine Beale’s novel, Another Life Altogether, a scene involving teenagers at a school dance turns into a nail-biter. The kids are in a cloakroom, away from the eyes of adults, when an older boy begins to taunt a younger one. The older boy threatens to burn the face of the younger one with the end of the cigarette and though he doesn’t—in fact, I’d argue that because he doesn’t (our expectation of violence has been raised but not “satisfied”)—things are all the more tense when a major character, an effeminate boy our narrator cares about, enters the room. Tension amplifies when a bloodthirsty girl eggs her bully-boyfriend on and the kids pass around a bottle of whiskey. Beale knows how to escalate. I couldn’t stop turning those pages.

Conflict, Action & Suspense, by William Noble
Another Life Altogether, by Elaine Beale

So there I am, walking out of the library, and I run into an old friend. That’s nice, you say. It would be, if not for the fact that I had, under my arm, a copy of this friend’s latest travel memoir. And here’s where many of you might wonder: What is the problem?

People unaware of how publishing works may not realize it, but being caught this way is not a good thing—because the question on the mind of the author of said memoir will certainly be: Why didn’t she buy my book?

Possible answers are that even though I have plans to buy it, I saw the book on the library shelf and couldn’t resist it, or that I have already bought it and this copy is for my sick mother-in-law. On this occasion, I chose the former, and my writer friend pretended to believe me.

Only slightly less embarrassing is being caught by the remainder table—a.k.a. Bargain Bin—of  your favorite bookstore, with a book authored by your old friend (perhaps now it would be more appropriate to say “ex-friend”). Yes, it’s true that in this situation you are intending to actually buy the book, but the fact is, this book was once $30 and is currently selling for $1.95 because the publisher dumped it. And this is something that you and your writer-friend don’t want to acknowledge. And how’re the kids? you ask her, chastising yourself because you should have bought the damn book when it was selling for full price, so that your now-ex-friend could collect the royalties on it. (Just so you know, she likely isn’t making a dime off that $1.95.)

I do buy books written by my closest friends, unless those books are ones I know I’ll never read. (I’m not interested in underwater hockey. I’m just not.)

Here’s the thing. If you know a lot of writers, you have a lot of books to buy, but being a writer yourself—especially one like me who earns income mainly from magazine articles and teaching—you don’t have much discretionary income. And what you have, you might prefer to spend on the latest novel by Margaret Atwood, whom you have never met.

Other than book-shopping/library borrowing early on Sunday when none of my friends, ex- or current, are likely to be awake, I don’t really have a tactful solution to this problem. Do you?

This seminar was memorable because of the boisterous, we-will-go-forth-and-spread-the-word energy it generated among the attendees, including me. Ever since that session, when I come across a female protagonist who has a real, aging body with sags and wrinkles, and who’s lived long enough to have a few regrets but also the wisdom and determination to change what she can, I am more appreciative. Tales of midlife transition—bring ‘em on!

Last Saturday night, with the TV room all to myself, I uncorked a Shiraz and watched Cairo Time. Juliette (played by one of my faves, Patricia Clarkson), a journalist who’s contentedly married, experiences not just pyramids but a long-buried part of herself. It’s been promoted as a romance, but in my view the movie is less about a love affair than it is about a heart—a middle-aged heart that’s rejuvenated. The Globe and Mail, while acknowledging that Cairo Time aims for subtly, complains the movie “seems to be making too much of too little.” I agree it’s a “quiet” film, but it’s these quiet stories that can lead to moments of reflection after the credits roll, and perhaps to deep conversation with a close friend over coffee the next day.

Another quiet story of a woman in midlife unfolds in the novel Delivery, by Betty Jane Hegerat. Protagonist Lynn kidnaps her young daughter’s baby and arrives on a B.C. island with her grandchild in a laundry basket and no plan. While figuring out what to do next, Lynn reviews her own life so far. Her daughter, Heather, shows up and it’s up to Heather to make the decision regarding the baby’s adoption. But by the end of the novel we sense our middle-aged heroine Lynn has also made a decision: to live the rest of her own life more fully. There’s no happily-ever-after, it’s a story of transition and like most real-life transitions it comes without fireworks. But it’s the kind of story that stays with you after the last page.

What are your favourite stories of midlife or older women? Please tell me. I want more.

(And, yes, I’m writing one myself, a story about several women dealing with midlife.)

For more: Delivery and Cairo Time.