the Tuesday interview: Elana K. Arnold

[thanks, as always, to Erica at royalquietdeluxe for the weekly interview]

Elana K. Arnold's book Sacred is coming out in Fall 2012 and I can't wait. She's one of those people (Like Lindsay Leavitt) who writes books, raises great kids and is funny and down to earth and you sort of want her to be your best friend.

RQD: What are you working on? What interests you about these characters?

Elana K. Arnold: Right now I’m doing the research for the sequel to SACRED, my first novel, which Random House/Delacorte is publishing next fall. SACRED and its sequel entwine Kabbalistic mysticism and provocative romance. So I’m reading lots of texts, trying to deepen my own understanding of this complicated and ancient topic—Kabbalah, that is. I love my protagonist,Scarlett because she’s flawed and somewhat broken but determined to heal and grow. Also, both SACRED and its sequel deal with horses—Scarlett is an avid rider—and I love writing about horses.

RQD: What art or artists interest you?

EA: My first love, even outside of fiction, is books. I love memoir; David Sedaris thrills me, John Elder Robison’s Look Me in the Eye was wonderful, Temple Grandin is amazing. When I listen to music it’s often James Taylor. His voice brings me back to my childhood since my parents always listened to his music, too. And I have a guilty fascination with celebrities… not necessarily as ‘artists,’ but as human beings.

RQD: What book, story or poem do you return to over and over?

E: Easy. His Dark Materials by Phillip Pullman is always nearby. Everything by John Irving, particularly A Prayer for Owen Meany. And Paul Auster’s books—namely The New York Trilogy—probably because I’m still trying to figure it out.

RQD: What are you reading now?

EA: Aside from texts about the Kabbalah—Arthur Green’s A Guide to the Zohar and Daniel C. Matt’s Essential Kabbalah—I’m revisiting mystery novels (a sort of pleasurable research). There are competing stacks of Agatha Christie and Harry Kemelman on my table. And I’m eagerly awaiting the release of Cheryl Strayed’s memoir Wild; I preordered it.

RQD:What did you read as a kid? What is its impact on your work now?

EA: Anything I could get my hands on. Anne of Green Gables and Gone with the Wind were huge for me, I devoured all of Christie’s books, and was fascinated by Everything You Ever Wanted to Know about Sex But were Afraid to Ask (which I found in my grandmother’s library!). All the Pretty Horses and Cowboys are my Weakness taught me that you could write about horses without being insipid. I read literary fiction—Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Salinger, Rand—and trashy bodice-ripper romances. I was an indiscriminate reader. I think the result is that as a writer I smash together everything I love, highbrow and lowbrow alike.

Two Titles for your Vets Day Reading List (for the price of one)

In honor of Veterans Day, we are pleased to announce (with gratitude to Grove/Atlantic for the ability to do so) a topical buy-one-get-one-free sale. This weekend (as in, right now through Sunday) if you buy a copy of Karl Marlantes' What It Is Like to Go To War, you'll also get a free copy of Matterhorn, his Vietnam war novel (and a former Green Apple Book of the Month) for free. Both an excellent literary deal and a hearty stack of timely and related reading material for the coming winter months, these two books both deal with the physical, political, and emotional effects of war -- Matterhorn from a fictional perspective, and What It Is Like to G0 to War a deeply personal and thorough non-fiction account of Marlantes' own experience as a veteran. The memoir, in which Marlantes struggles with trauma and navigating his relationships upon his return home (at one point even seeking absolution in a meeting with mythologist Joseph Campbell), professes itself to be both a personal reconciliation of sorts and a call to citizens and legislators to better understand the consequences of war for the individual. And if you've been waiting to read Matterhorn (a book we liked so much that multiple Green Applers endorsed it last year), or were considering giving it as a gift, well, what better time?

the Tuesday interview: Nova Ren Suma

(thanks to Erica over at royalquietdeluxe for this interview)

I bought Nova Ren Suma's book, Imaginary Girls, because I loved the cover (I love covers) but when I read the first three pages, I slammed the book shut. Damn this book is good. I saved it for my SF/NY flight and as soon as I got settled, I started in again. I didn't look up. I didn't watch the movie. Five hours went by and I was completely transported.

RQD: What are you working on? What interests you about these characters?

Nova Ren Suma: I’m working on a few things—all in different stages—so my head’s a mess right now. My next YA novel coming out with Dutton (release date still to be determined) is a ghost story, in a way, and sometimes the pieces I write for it deeply disturb me. WHO wrote that? I think. And then I realize… Oh, that was me. The characters in it, these girls with frightening fates, have been haunting me for the past year. I’m interested in rescuing them from what they have to face, and I think they’re interested in pulling me in with them.

RQD: What art or artists (not fiction, but theatre, painters, music, etc.) interest you?

NRS: There is a photographer who’s fascinated me for years. I first discovered her photographs in a college photo class, when we were studying self-portraits, and she’s been my favorite artist ever since: Francesca Woodman. It’s a very sad story (she committed suicide at age 22), and in her beautiful black-and-white images—many of which are of herself—you can see how stunningly talented she was. There’s so much said in these images, by the way she blurs herself out and hides within the frame, by what’s shown as well as what’s not shown. I can’t even articulate how much I love her photographs.

I’m also drawn to female musicians—to a certain kind of voice (always honest), and a storytelling quality in songs. I have such a crush on Amanda Palmer… she’s amazing. And I’m a huge fan of Chan Marshall, Karen O., PJ Harvey, Emily Haines, and Alison Mosshart. I’d listen to, and write to, any song they sing.

RQD: What book, story or poem do you return to over and over?

NRS: There are some books I’ve read again and again and will continue to, probably for the rest of my life. One is a novel called The Last Life by Claire Messud; I’m obsessed with it. Another is Story of a Girl by Sara Zarr. Then there are the short stories, the Alice Munro collections and Jesus’ Son by Denis Johnson (which I’ve been known to read aloud to others, especially his story “Dirty Wedding,” which, just… wow) and Miles from Nowhere by Nami Mun and the brilliant fairy-tale retellings in Angela Carter’s The Bloody Chamber.

RQD: What are you reading now?

NRS: I’m reading some YA manuscripts I must keep secret… but I’m loving what I’ve read so far. I also believe in using tempting books as motivators, so my reward for finishing the proposal pages of my next novel and turning them in to my agent will be 1Q84, Haruki Murakami’s new novel, which promises to be very magical.

RQD: What did you read as a kid? What is its impact on your work now?

NRS: I read anything and everything I could get my hands on. When I look back, I see that the books that most impacted me were the novels I found on my mom’s bookshelves. She was—still is—an avid reader. Seeing her read and love books all throughout my childhood certainly shaped me as a person and ignited this dream in me to write my own books one day. When I was about twelve or thirteen I borrowed her Margaret Atwood books: Cat’s Eye and The Handmaid’s Tale. They opened my eyes to what kinds of stories I could tell. They showed me that stories about girls could be books, too. I decided I’d grow up to be a writer very soon after that.

Photo: Francesca Woodman, Polka Dots,

Providence, Rhode Island, 1976 on view at SFMOMA

November's Book of the Month: Luminous Airplanes

Here's our pitch to get you to read our latest "Book of the Month" pick, Paul La Farge's Luminous Airplanes:

Paul La Farge's latest novel is, essentially, a chronicle of failure: it's about airplanes that never make it off the ground; a religious sect who awaited an uplifting rapture that never came; and what turned out to be the false promise of the dot com boom, when it seemed the sky was the limit for the possibilities of emerging technologies. Although a book of failures may not promise the most inspirational reading, La Farge manages, through his winsome narrator, to humorously and deftly weave together these (and other) strands to create a picture of the turn of the 21st century--set right here in San Francisco--that feels as true and fantastic as the world itself. Be sure to also explore the immersive online text that accompanies this splendid novel.

As usual, we guarantee your reading satisfaction.

Lock the doors, unplug that TV, it's NaNoWriMo!

Today is the day, noble scribes. . . it begins!

Now in it's 13th year, The National Novel Writing Month is a tough as nails challenge, a grueling marathon, and if you complete it, a success worthy of writing books about. Oh, wait, that's the whole idea, isn't it?

Indeed. In a nutshell, NaNoWriMo is a month-long kick in the pants, encouraging budding novelists to commit themselves to beginning (from scratch), and finishing a 50,000 word novel in 30 days. Feh. . . you kids got it easy this year; if I remember right, wasn't last year's goal 60,000 words? But, I may still be living in a fantasy. . . Still, for those of you who are better with letters than you are with numbers, let me break this year's goal down for you: to reach 50k words in the month of November, you'll need to pump out 1,666 words a day, every day. I couldn't do it, but last year some 37,500 folks did - just look at how this movement has exploded:

Annual participant/winner totals:

1999: 21 participants and six winners

2000: 140 participants and 29 winners

2001: 5000 participants and more than 700 winners

2002: 13,500 participants and around 2,100 winners

2003: 25,500 participants and about 3,500 winners

2004: 42,000 participants and just shy of 6,000 winners

2005: 59,000 participants and 9,769 winners

2006: 79,813 participants and 12,948 winners

2007: 101,510 participants and 15,333 winners

2008: 119,301participants and 21,683 winners

2009: 167,150 participants and 32,178 winners

2010: 200,500 participants and 37, 500 winners

So good luck to all of you who accept this grand challenge - I'm in! Just remember, the ONLY thing that matters in NaNoWriMo is output. It’s all about quantity, not quality. This approach forces you to lower your expectations, take risks, and write on the fly. In other words, Just Write It!

the tuesday interview: Andrew Sean Greer

thanks to our friend Erica at royalquietdeluxe!

I still find it surprising when writers I admire say yes to my interview requests. Andrew Sean Greer is one of those writers. He's our writer, a Bay Area writer, and he's always struck me as someone you'd like to have around, someone who, as he says, is "game for a mysterious adventure."

RQD: What are you working on? What interests you about these characters?

Andrew Sean Greer: I'm finishing the third draft of a novel called "Many Worlds" that is a literary novel set in multiple universes. As for these characters, I finally get to have some people with a sense of humor!

RQD: What art or artists have an effect on your work?

ASG: Poetry and painting has the greatest effect on me; poetry because they are doing the hard work down in the mines, and what they bring up always inspires my own work, and painting because there is something about the intensity of the painted flat surface that mesmerizes and moves me outside all reason. I find portraits to be fascinating. But for intensity, something like Cy Twombly or Serra's recent show of drawings at the Met really do it for me. Big overpowering movement. Cleverness does nothing for me; emotion is all I'm interested in with art. That probably goes for fiction as well.

RQD: What book, story or poem do you return to over and over?

ASG: Now I don't return to things because I love them; I return to them because they help my writing. These are related but not the same. And I'd say Proust and Grace Paley and Wallace Stevens. They always knock my socks off and get me going.

RQD: What are you reading now?

ASG: I'm reading Calvino's Six Memos for the Next Millennium

RQD: What did you read as a kid? What is its impact on your work now?

ASG: I read antique children's fiction--you know, Five Little Peppers and How They Grew, and Tom Sawyer, and the Boxcar Children and all that--that gradually turned into fantasy and science fiction and then turned into philosophical fiction by high school like Camus. Strangely enough, I still find those old books satisfying in ways that sci fi and even Camus are not, anymore. I think it's the quality of the writing and characterization. And the sense of people game for a mysterious adventure!

Drawing: Richard Serra "Late September" 2001

a lazy blogger's links

I have nothing original to say today, but these are a few of my favorite things of late online:

• Chip Kidd discussing his process on designing Murakami's 1Q84 cover.
• this weekly list of diversions for kids called "Because the Sunday New York Times Doesn't Have Comics."
• a NYT piece answering this: "When an e-reader is loaded with thousands of books, does it gain any weight?" In short? Yes. Barely.
• Our peers in DC at Politics and Prose have a swell FB page that gleans advice on good living from famous authors.
• Finally, on our own FB page, there's quite a lively discussion of literary Halloween costumes (though thankfully no Virginia Woolf suggestions. Yet).

Now go read a good book (like the one I'm enjoying now, Peter Orner's new novel Love and Shame and Love).