Read 'Til You Drop

I finished reading Tracy Chevalier's THE LADY AND THE UNICORN night before last. I truly enjoyed this historical novel (positing the characters behind the creation of the Unicorn tapestries.) Mark and I heard Chevalier speak last year, at a series of historical fiction writers, sponsored by the Smithsonian. Chevalier laughed self-deprecatingly when asked about LADY; she said that she seems to have a passion for writing about women in artwork. (Yes, you know her name because she wrote GIRL WITH A PEARL EARRING.)

Her novel THE VIRGIN BLUE was - in some odd ways that have nothing to do with anything direct or linear - the basis of my short story "The Darkbeast", which was published in the anthology FANTASTIC COMPANIONS (edited by Julie Czerneda.)

While all of her novels take place in different time periods, and all have separate and unique story arcs, they all have a similarity of tone and nature of story-telling. Her narrative is deceptively "on the surface" - she uses few images to create her story. Her characters (who narrate in the first person) say precisely what they're thinking as they're thinking it - even when those thoughts do not reflect well on them. Some characters lie to themselves, but they're not aware of the lies.

All in all, a brisk, exhilirating read that stimulated lots of thoughts about writing in my own little mind.

And here's the list for the year:



And no, I don't intend to comment on every book I read. Just the ones that stand out for some reason.

Mindy, off to get some writing done