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.

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?

Reading is integral to writing.

It should come as no surprise that reading is a huge part of my writing process.  I’m a compulsive reader, so any word that comes around my eyes will get read at some point.  What surprises me is the breadth of work that helps me through my own writing.  I tend to approach nonfiction like fiction and vice-versa.

Though some complain that reading like a writer is exhausting or depressing, I find it particularly pleasurable.  What’s the voice?  How is the story told?  What details catch the writer’s attention and which are jettisoned?  What about subject matter…what brings the author closer to the story?  What does the actual page look like?  Are the sentences dense or curt or do they vary?  I try to let myself get swept up in the story, but once I’m done, I look back on the experience and try to glean some broader lessons. 

My day job is marketing and brand strategy, and it brings a lot of nontraditional reading material my way.  I inhale everything from long-form investigative journalism to tweets about Britney Spears’s boobs.  Both help me look at words and information in a different way.  Add in some biographies and a few Georgette Heyer novels and you’re just about right. 

I can’t imagine wanting to write without my ongoing reading habit, nor can I imagine being the writer I am/becoming without reading widely and curiously.  For some reason, I’m not worried about other voices imbuing themselves in my writing.  I really can’t afford to miss a thing. 

What about you?  How does reading fit into your writing process? 

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!

Wanna tell your readers? Right-click save the banners below:

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?

I'll admit it. I'm overjoyed at the chance to use this picture.

I’m going to try to avoid the kneejerk “omfghowcouldyouevensuggestotherwise” and say…

I’ve run into this question before.  Usually it’s coupled with some kind of discussion of the dangers of tainting your voice, style, or goals with the work of another writer.  I myself sometimes limit the genre or amount I am reading while working on certain pieces of writing…it can exert a strange pull that takes me away from myself, not to mention the many procrastinatory dangers of the pile of books that’s sooooo much more tempting than the pile of crap I produce while drafting.

Yes, these are valid reasons to perhaps limit, dampen, or avoid reading in certain situations.  But dear God!  How could you commit words to paper without a love of words, and paper, and books, and libraries, and readers, and escape, and fantasy?  How could you go down the long-ass road to publication, replete with pitfalls, hissy fits, self-doubt, ego crushes, and challenges of every kind, without loving the end result? Not to mention the fact that being at least semi-well-read is even more important once published so that you don’t sound like a complete boor.  Believe me.

We don’t all need to be crazy bibliophiles or even lovers of the classics.  But I’m not sure I want to read anything from a writer without a love of books and the written word and media of all kind and an active, inquisitive, engaged reading habit.

Talk me off the ledge here, friends.  Do you think writers should have an active reading habit?

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? 

Like many of you, I enjoyed Black Swan and Tron: Legacy in movie theaters Christmas week, but I also had the pleasure of reading Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz’s new biography of Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Wild Unrest, and Daphne Kalotay’s exquisite Russian Winter.  Without spoiling any of them, I will say that each has something to say about the nature of perfection and the reality of imperfection.  Perfection lingers, tempts…imperfection stays, concrete and gritty, and colors all it touches.

With one of the most eventful years of my life coming to a close, I can’t help but see imperfection all around.  I’d wanted to finish another book by this time, somehow be a Much-Lauded Bestseller (!), lose a small person’s worth of weight, perfectly balance the demands of running my own business and being a working writer.  Yeah, not so much.  But there are still moments of perfection in there.  An exquisite tea to celebrate Jane Austen’s birthday.  A room full of seventh graders growing interested in reading.  A constant stream of conversation with other writers and readers who care about literary heroines as much as I do.  Reviews that are heartfelt and positive and that do justice to the time and heart I poured into my first book.  Stealing glances at a Christmas card that meant a lot to me.  Refining and finding my voice with every day of sloppy and imperfect writing.

I wrote The Heroine’s Bookshelf firm in the belief that we all need some heroines to get us through our days.  Luckily, they weren’t perfect and neither were their authors.  As I muse on my own heroically imperfect life these days, I have a feeling that’s exactly as it should be.

As literary, educated, even occasionally erudite people, there’s always a competitive urge.  We want to be able to check selections off a list, to be included.  It’s fun to be on the inside of a conversation.  It’s fun to be in the know.

Well, fellow bookworms.  I would like to suggest we call off all this shame around reading.

I don’t care if your favorite book is Flowers in the Attic or War and Peace.  I don’t care if you read the cereal box or The Atlantic.  I don’t care if you inhale books via ereader or ancient tome.  What I do care about is the love of reading and the joy that accompanies the discovery of amazing literary heroines.

If you’re anything like me, your to-read list is a mile long (and, if you’re an author, you may be surprised to find that other people are suddenly interested in your heretofore private reading habits).  If you’re anything like me, there are also days on which you blow off that “must-read” piece of literary fiction for an easy, trashy read.   And that is okay.

In conclusion…I would just hate if The Heroine’s Bookshelf were taken as a criticism of people who had not read the books it contains.  Rather, it’s a very personal exploration of heroines who have touched my life (and the lives of many others).  I bet there is lots of middle ground with most of my readers, but for me the interesting part of the conversation often lies in the places where we diverge.

So…tell me.  Who are you ashamed of not reading?  What author have you been wanting to get to know?  What’s the last book you put down in favor of an easier read?