03/07/19
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Ann @ 3:07 pm
Frustration! That’s the name of my game these days. A friend recently told me she admired my tenacity, that a normal person would have given up this writing business long ago. Not that there haven’t been days where thoughts of quitting have floated through my mind… But on the other hand, I am committed and truly enjoy the art of creating sentences and paragraphs that build my stories. It’s the publishing and promoting part that wears me down!
We are still in a deep freeze mode in northwest Pennsylvania. Yesterday a delivery truck was stuck in our driveway, it always drifts badly with the wind, and we had snow flurries all day with lots of cold wind. That’s why I always use winter tires.
Some good books I have read recently are:
Beach Music by Pat Conroy, Fiction, 1994. Excellent novel. He was a master storyteller. It was our book club’s choice for last month. (Great book discussion!) I read it more than twenty years ago; I got so much more out of it this time than I did my first reading.
My Exaggerated Life, Pat Conroy, by Katherine Clark. Biography, 2018. Mandatory reading for all Pat Conroy fans, his only authorized biography. It reads like a wonderful novel. You won’t be sorry to read this one, and you may be sorry if you don’t!
The Tilted World by Tom Franklin and Beth Ann Fennelly. Historical Fiction. 2013. The first collaboration from a very talented husband-wife writing team. It is our book club choice for March, also Bradford’s community read for this year. Author Beth will be at our university in March to read from their novel. It started a bit slow, but soon became a page-turner with unforgettable characters and a chillingly suspenseful plot. Dealt with the greatest national disaster in the history of the USA, the 1927 floods of the Mississippi River. I highly recommend this one!
A Force of Nature by Jane Harper. Fiction. 2017. Another great suspenseful novel from Australia with well developed characters and a that plot keeps the reader guessing until the end. It is another mystery with Federal Agent Aaron Falk investigating the disappearance of a colleague. I also highly recommend this book.
Jordan Point and St John’s Folly by Kathryn R. Wall, the last two novels in the Bay Tanner series. Library Journal stated: “Sue Grafton, Sara Paretsky, and Marcia Muller come to mind as the quintessential writers of the modern female private eye novel. Wall, in her quiet and unassuming way, has produced a body of work of equal quality. Highly recommended.” Kathryn Wall has stopped writing. I bought the entire set of her novels and proudly displayed them on my book case. I hope to meet her on a future trip to Hilton Head. BUT you don’t have to be familiar with Hilton Head to enjoy her books. She is a masterful story teller.
Movies we enjoyed:
Iron Jawed Angels staring Hilary Swank, 2014. My book club watched this movie after discussing Sisters, the Lives of America’s Suffragists by Jean H. Baker, (Nonficiton.), at the January meeting. We were in Hilton Head and I missed the meeting, but watched the movie twice after we came home. It was an excellent supplement for Sisters.We’ve all heard of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. But there were so many others who were equally committed to getting the votes for women, such as Lucy Stone, Frances Willard and Alice Paul. This movie followed the life and sacrifice of Alice Paul. Great book and great movie!
Florence Nightingale, starring Jacqueline Smith. A wonderful depiction of the sacrifice and suffering Miss Nightingale suffered in her commitment to bringing nursing care into the realm of respect and good medicine. Another great movie.
That’s all for now. Till next time, keep reading my friends.
Ann
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