Good Reads

Just in time for Christmas and all December holidays, Deb's Book Recommendations!  Ta-da!  Recently I found myself prescribing books like nutritionists prescribe supplements to under-nourished people, under-read folks I've met at holiday cocktail parties or at my yoga classes.

One corporate exec said he hasn't read anything but The Economist--for years!  He looked gray and worn, so I prescribed some colorful reading, Jimmy Buffett's Tales From Margaritaville.  My friend and poet Tom Wayman recommended this awesome book of fiction short stories to me a few years ago.    I took it with me on vacation; it was a great read and has become one of my treasured books--still has beach sand and margarita salt in it!  Buffett is a great story teller, the essence of a good writer, I think.  And, it's FUN.  Remember?  Reading is FUNdamental?

Another gentlemen, same party, told me that he secretly wants to write romance novels.  No, he was not hitting on me.  So I told him that I secretly want to teach a writing workshop, foster the writing talent of people like him, folks who have that writing urge nagging at them.  He said he likes Nicholas Sparks and after I threw up in my mouth a little bit, I told him I think he should aim higher than Sparks' novels (though I have to admit the last romance novel I read WAS Nights in Rodanthe, which was pretty good--oops).  I think I recommended Buffett's Tales novel to him, too, for its fun and quirky romances and great characters.

I recommended When Women Were Birds by Terry Tempest Williams (TTW) to my journaling yoga group.  TTW writes prose that sings like a song bird, and her meditative, almost journal-writing style makes for a breezy, spiritual experience and some good meditative thinking on women's voices.  Maybe we are all songbirds.  A line from a Nushu poem reads:

Beside a well, one won't thirst;
Beside a sister, one won't despair.

When Women Were Birds, pictured below, has a white cover, so its image doesn't show up well, but here it is.

Three people recommended the same book to me, and in my haze of end of term writing and reading work, I kept forgetting about it.  However, the day before I left to go on a retreat, I made a stop at the bookstore.  I wandered aimlessly, with no specific hunt in mind, only wanting a book to take with me for the weekend's downtown.  I stopped in front of a book case and there in the center of the shelves I saw a book titled, The Artist's Way.  Something about it seemed familiar, so I bought it.  Turns out it's that three-times recommended book.  Turns out it's a course on finding, restoring, embracing your creativity.  It requires a commitment to writing 3 pages a day.  I've knocked that back to one or two, and am trying to be open minded about some of its concepts.