There seems to be a barely-articulated expectation that as a published author I decry all books that can’t be classified as Serious Novels (notwithstanding the fact that lots of women’s fiction is not seen as “serious” in their eyes). Even worse, there seems to be an expectation from both genders that women should be ashamed of their reading. Add a drop of 50 Shades of Gray and a dose of secretive Kindle reading, and I think we’ve got an epidemic on our hands!

Lest you think I’m above knocking my own reading habits, consider this:  The other day, I was looking for a piece of light reading while waiting for an appointment and decided on a popular, made-into-a-movie-perhaps-starring-Meryl-Streep-as-an-Anna-Wintour-esque-harpy-boss bestseller…and found myself shielding the Kindle from passers-by. What, I ask, is up with that?

I’m sure it would be best if we all spent all of our precious reading hours elevating ourselves with amazing prose and brilliant erudition, but sometimes a girl just wants to read…whatever she feels like reading. To me, the choice of a book is as personal as any other choice (and mine alone to make). When we decry our reading in front of others, we teach them to question their own impulses and choices and plant the seeds of shame in our daughters and friends.

I’m bringing this up because it’s coming up in various parts of my reading and writing life. I’m doing some work right now that reminds me how dramatic and incredible the opportunity to freely read truly is (how’s that for grammar?!). Women’s reading and writing were nothing short of revolutionary for a long time, given constraints on subjects considered appropriate for ladies. It makes me feel ornery and a bit mad at myself. And so I ask you to talk to me about shame and reading.

Are you ashamed of your reading habits? If so, why?  Help me figure this out.

Last weekend, I had the honor of giving a book talk and participating in an author panel hosted by Pikes Peak Writers, and the question came up over and over again as we shared the difficulties of things like getting noticed, figuring out royalty statements, dealing with change in the industry, and all that waiting. It was one of the more honest discussions on the pitfalls of the business I’ve heard in a while, and probably raised the hair of the aspiring authors in the audience (sorry, guys).

This is not how I look while writing.

After the event, I headed back to my hotel, a splurge intended to give me the chance to write uninterrupted and in relative luxury for a weekend in a desperate attempt to Get The Damned Book Proposal Turned In. I opened up my document only to find that it sucked. Everything was wrong. The chronology was off, it was boring and pompous, and I was reminded how much of a longshot it is that anyone will ever want to buy a piece of anyone’s writing, let alone mine. I was reminded of my fellow panelists and all of the stress and hardship of the industry and the fact that Writing is Hard. So hard.

I indulged this feeling for a little bit, contemplating the certain destruction of my career and my lonely, withered and unloved death. Then I did the only thing I really know how to do—I leaned into it. I shuffled my notes around. I acquired snacks, and ate them. I audibly groaned at times. I chewed on my pen. I listened to the same music on repeat. Soon I was rearranging the chronology, slashing words and putting others in their places, feeling out how to stitch that little piece of narrative together.

I finished the proposal and hit send.

This incident reminded me of why I love writing and why it’s so worth it. To me, writing is more than a contract or my name on the front of a book, though I will not lessen the significance or excitement of either of those things. It’s the annoying exhilaration of figuring it out so that I can talk to all of you. I finished the weekend kind of exhausted and bleary-eyed, but closer to triumphant than I’ve been for a while. Getting that draft done was the personal equivalent of hitting a personal record on a run or scoring some kind of work victory. Best of all? I get to do that again, and again, and again.

So…yeah, it’s worth it.

To wit: Eleanor Brown, the most fun lunch companion, well, ever, just hit the New York Times and IndieNext paperback bestseller lists with the paperback of The Weird Sisters, a book that amazed me and is likely to delight the many book clubs who have been chomping at the bit for a paperback edition. 

And Stephanie Burgis! Stephanie is a real dear, and not just because she turned me on to Georgette Heyer. She writes the best kinds of books: middle-grade fantasies with a strong dash of Regency, and her debut novel, Kat Incorrigible, was just included on VOYA’s Top Shelf List for Favorite Middle-Grade Fiction of 2011.

And the very wonderful Sandra Hume is deep in preparations for Laurapalooza 2012 in Mankato (won’t you join us?).

And Ellen F. Brown, whose Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind made my must-read list for 2011, just published an amazing article in Bloomberg on why book publishing will survive the digital age.

And Liz Michalski is hard at work on her next novel, and Daniel Hernandez keeps blowing my mind with his reporting from Mexico City (check out his Down & Delirious in Mexico City, you won’t regret it), and Kyla Calvert is working on an exceptional series on homeless youth in San Diego County, and Kj Swanson just was accepted to St. Andrews in Scotland, where she will dissertate about the Brontës.

What about you? What are your latest accomplishments?

Emily Brontë, as painted by her brother Branwell.

See, Emily was a bit…odd.  She had a really hard time being out in the world (not that Haworth afforded her much of a chance of that).  She didn’t identify with others.  I always think of her thinking as orthogonal or perpendicular to that of the people she was surrounded with at the time (yes, I just used a math metaphor; no, it won’t happen again).  I truly think she saw life differently than those around her.  She identified with the nature and the animals with which she chose to pass her time.  She was familiar with a kind of passion that is still scary and transgressive these days. 

But she was also a sister, and vital to her family in her small way.  Mrs. Gaskell reports that sister Charlotte was haunted by the lost howls of Emily’s dog, Keeper, in the hallway outside of Emily’s door once she had gone.  Anne’s grief over the death of Emily surely contributed to her early decline.  Emily herself had suffered greatly with her anger and grief when her brother, Branwell, preceded her in tubercular death. 

I guess what I am reminded of today is that Emily, no matter how different from her family, no matter how unsociable or inscrutable, was also as much a member of her family as the close-halled, quiet parsonage in which they lived and died.  She was as much a part of her sisters’ (and her brother’s, though he did not pursue a literary career in adulthood) writing as they were themselves.  Many recent circumstances remind me that we keep our families with us wherever we go, whether they are intractable and difficult or not.  They can be part of us in mysterious ways, as I am discovering in a small way (my mom and grandmother are both participating in next week’s readalong…what were the odds?).  I am glad we have this literary family to look back on and remember.  Happy birthday, Emily. 

It’s time for the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong! 

Discover (or reacquaint yourself with) Margaret Mitchell’s perennial classic, which turns 75 this year.  It’s a chunkster, to be sure, but it’s also a hotbed of romance, scandal, historical detail and roiling controversy…and it features one of literature’s most petulant and complex heroines. 

How It Works

To participate, just tell me you plan to read along in the comments below.  Then procure a copy of the classic and start reading.  We’ll meet here on the blog on the following schedule to discuss the book in parts.  I’ll summarize each part and include historical background and fun ways to approach the book as a conversation-starter…then we’ll discuss in the comments.  And I’ll be giving away GWTW-inspired prizes to make this summer read even juicier!

The Schedule*

• August 1: Discuss Part 1 (Chapters 1-7)
• August 15: Discuss Part 2 (Chapters 8-16)
• September 5: Discuss Part 3 (Chapters 17-30)
• September 26: Discuss Part 4 (Chapters 31-47)
• October 17: Discuss Part 5 (Chapters 48-63)

*Due to the chunkster nature of this novel, I’ve broken our group reading down into five parts.  You’ll have two weeks to read the first two parts, and three weeks to read each subsequent part.  But buyer beware…this book just might be hard not to read in one feverish, fell swoop! 

Are You In?

Please introduce yourself, tell us where you’re from and whether you’ve read the book before.  Happy reading!

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I’m at loose ends these days.

Between the usual summer rush of entrepreneurship, my long to-read list, an unfinished novel taunting me from the corner of my desk, and a book to promote, life feels like a hodgepodge more often than not.

Not that I’m complaining…not at all.  This summer has brought all sorts of bookish pleasures, including but not limited to:

• A road trip with Eleanor Brown to Salida, Colorado, where we’ll participate in a literary shindig, mountain style
• Further reading encounters with Georgette Heyer, who has made this year all the merrier
• Plans for the Great Gone With the Wind Readalong (still pending)
• Sweet notes and reviews from readers
• The knowledge that the more time I spend on my writing, the closer I get to what I increasingly see as my calling (a capital C is probably necessary here, but it makes me nervous)

How about you? What literary delights are punctuating your protagonist’s summer?

Despite all the well-deserved hoopla (with very worthy press coverage of the amazing Ellen F. Brown’s Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind and even a thrilling upcoming media appearance for yours truly…more on that later), I can’t help but think about my first encounter with the book.

Scarlett looking strangely...angelic.

Like most people, I ran into the movie before the book.  I remember Alexandra Dodd’s very ’80s mother sitting us down and telling us we were in for an EVENT.  We watched, were intrigued.  I promptly forgot.  Until sixth grade, when the monotony of my first regular long bus ride set in and I borrowed my mother’s copy.

I remember the smell of the bus seat and the bump of the roads, but not as much as I remember the hell of a summer’s day when birthing babies, escaping Atlanta and displaying gumption were on the docket for Scarlett O’Hara.  Little did I know that I was meeting a lifechanger, a book that would stay with me for the rest of my life.

I used to carry a battered copy of GWTW in my car, ready for my many solitary lunches, a book I’d open at random or read from cover to cover and then start over again right after reading the end.  I have to pause when writing my own historical fiction to make sure I’m not speaking in Peggy Mitchell’s beautiful prose by mistake (don’t worry, there’s usually no danger of that, especially in a first draft!).

Over the years, I have gone from viewing the book as an adventurous love story to a very adult novel of loss, hubris, trauma, and miscommunication.  I’ve gone from loving Scarlett to hating her and back to love again.  I’ve come to really appreciate Mitchell’s deft characterization, her exhaustive historical knowledge that never feels boring, her ability to show us a hell of a good time while everyone is crying their eyes out. I know that GWTW is a book with a troubled history and a polarizing nature (something I do address in my book and have given a lot of thought to), but I also know that it changed my life as a writer, as a woman, and as a reader.

Thanks for the lifechanger, Margaret Mitchell.

*Well, technically not today, but the beginning of June marks a month of celebration and GWTW-related high-jinks, and besides, the original book was printed in May 1936, which you’ll learn all about in EFB’s book!

Doesn’t “Scott” look marvelously creepy?

I do a lot of events, and most of said events usually include a question and answer session at which I am asked a question something like this:

What do you think of Twilight/Harry Potter/vampire books/fanfic/The Downfall of Literature?

I get the feeling most people expect me to launch into some kind of tirade about how they suck and are diminishing the grand world of books for one and all, but they are bound to be disappointed.

You see, I’m what you could call a catholic or voracious reader, a person who will peruse the shampoo bottle or the Penny Saver as long as it’s covered in words.

Somewhere along the line, I got hooked on reading.  Not just by Dickens, Alcott, Wilder and Brontë, but by the lesser goddesses of literature…V.C. Andrews, Francine Pascal, and Ann M. Martin, to name a few.

I don’t have any problem with books that get people hooked on other books.  In fact, I would rather someone read 29,252 Sweet Valley High SuperSpecials (if only!) or Dollenganger monstrosities or Twilight/Miley Cyrus crossover fan fic and never encountered a word of Austen or Colette than never learned to love reading at all.

Books can be gateway drugs, my friends.  I saw my brothers become voracious readers thanks to a nerdy magician named Harry.  I watched my English as a second language, indifferent-to-books-on-a-good-day mentee get reeled into the wide world of YA by issue novels of questionable quality.  After all, who am I to tell someone what they can or can’t enjoy?

My own reading habits are not always high-brow or impressive…in fact, I could (and probably should) write a whole blog post about my love/hate relationship with women’s magazines.  I’m never going to apologize for loving me some series romance, fan fiction, or celebrity memoir.  And neither should you.

Ever feel curious about the oh-so-prolific painter of the fabled Sweet Valley High covers?  Here’s a great pic of Jimmy at work via The Dairi Burger. Is it wrong that I really want to commission a piece of SVH-style art from him? 

When people hear that The Heroine’s Bookshelf deals with “classic” authors and books, there are two normal reactions:  the thrilled intake of breath…or the heaving, miserable sigh.  You know the one.  It’s the sigh that says “oh, GOD, here we go again.  She’s going to force a bunch of dowdy, out-of-date, unreadable yet somehow supposedly relevant trash down my throat.”  You can almost hear the death rattle.

To this I usually say something like “RELAX!  Books can’t bite!”, which is true.

But there’s more to the story.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lightly. It should be thrown with great force. - Dorothy Parker

Blame terrible high school English teachers or The Academy or what you will, classics have a bad reputation these days.  Somehow, over time, living books got thrown in the vast garbage dump of memory, acquiring all of the sour non-appeal of books unread, unwanted, and unloved.  And while I have a teensy-tiny problem with the idea of naming an entire group of books “classic” while leaving another set of books entirely out of the equation, I don’t think classics are half bad.

Yes, this is coming from someone who read Jane Eyre for the first time at the tender, too-young age of 8.

But it’s also coming from someone who is frustrated with the status quo.

The accepted definition of classic seems to go something like this:

Old + Boring + Critically Acclaimed + [bonus points if written by a man] = CLASSIC

Yeah.  Not so much. Who says a book has to be old and boring to be classic?

I propose that we reverse the paradigm…shake things up a bit…give credit where credit is due.  I’d like to reframe classic as something that matters and excites.  After all, that’s how I think of my favorite books.

In the world of Erin, CLASSIC = Timeless + Fearless + Engaging.  This paradigm looks for relevance and signs of life.  It also renders books such as Thackeray’s Vanity Fair (a supposed Classic we are all told we must read and love) non-classic, while elevating a book like Jacqueline Susanne’s deliciously trashy Valley of the Dolls to Classic status.  And I’m at peace with that.

So…what do you think of my formula?  Can a classic be new, “trashy,” or non-canonically accepted? Let me know.