Every other Tuesday marks our new Murder HE Writes feature, starting on March 19th–we’re already booked with male thriller writers through May! I’m very excited about this new feature, because we all love our male counterparts. I could tell you who’s joining us … but I won’t 🙂 We’ll make it a surprise.
So you get me (again) today, and I’m going to talk about books.
Everyone here loves books, or you probably wouldn’t be reading our blog. Sure, many of us like television, and movies, and sewing, and cooking, and sports, and a host of other things, but the reason we come back to this blog is because at our core, reading is part of our life. Reading is so important that if we didn’t have books, we would feel incomplete. Reading fulfills us in ways that other activities can’t.
Before I was ever a writer, I was a reader. And I think that is true for all of the writers here at Murder She Writes.
Growing up in the 70s and 80s, there was no real “young adult” genre. Lots of great kids books, but few for older kids. Once I finished all the Judy Blume and Paula Danziger books, once I made my way through Trixie Belden and Nancy Drew and — yes — even Agatha Christie when I was only 11 — I had little left to read. The books were either too young for me or too old. I started reading many of my mom’s books (some much, much too old for me!) but by the time I was 13, I discovered Stephen King (THE STAND) and never went back to kids books.
There were some great books appropriate for kids 12+ that were published for adults. Stephen King, Douglas Adams’ HITCHHIKERS GUIDE TO THE GALAXY, and many of my mom’s police procedurals (I remember reading through Lillian O’Donnell, I think her name was, and Joseph Wambaugh and Ed McBain, among others.) I read science fiction (mostly Ray Bradbury) and classics (THE ODYSSEY) and more. In school I was exposed to a wide breadth of work that most high school kids read, but I’ll always remember one of my English teachers, Mr. Jones, who in my senior English class had us study THE PRINCESS BRIDE —Â before the movie was ever made. Our entire final was on this book, two questions each worth 1/4 of our final grade, and an essay worth half our grade. He suggested we read the book two or three times, and I did. I still remember the first question: What are the levels of the Zoo of Death? I can’t remember all five off the top of my head (now 25 years later), but I’ll never forget the fifth level where the most poisonous spider ever resided behind the doorknob. And was stepped on. (And yes, I passed my final with flying colors.)
I didn’t really discover romance until I was in college, and read Nora Roberts’ RIVER’S END. After that, I devoured a dozen Nora Roberts books, but found myself particularly drawn to her romantic suspense titles, like DIVINE EVIL and SACRED SINS. Is that even a surprise, considering I love writing romantic suspense?
I was never without a book, and I take great pleasure in knowing that two of my five kids are the same way.
I rarely re-read books. Maybe because most of what I read is romantic suspense and thrillers and mysteries, once I know how it all works out, I don’t want to read it again. I have far too many books I want to read that I haven’t to spend time re-reading books I have. There are exceptions. I read THE STAND twice (once when I was 13, again when I was in college.) And during the last few years, I’ve been re-reading books my kids have to read for school — classics like FAHRENHEIT-451 (still once of my all-time favorite books) and Orwell’s 1984 and Golding’s LORD OF THE FLIES and Salinger’s CATCHER IN THE RYE. Two years ago I re-read most of ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, and once again was stunned by the similarities to Stephen King’s short story, “Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption.” Shawshank is, essentially, the optimistic counterpart to Cuckoo. Both set in prisons (of sorts) with prisoners who were innocent under  cruel wardens. Both stories were told from a relatively minor character’s POV instead of the central characters (Andy Dufresne and McMurphy), but the central characters were catalysts to the POV characters growth.One has an uplifting ending, one has a sad ending. I think they should be taught together.
Stories, in all forms, unite us, and I hope I’m never without a new book … and an old.
And … we have winners from our contest I forgot to post them on Sunday, so here they are … if your name is here, please email me (Allison) with your mailing address. You’ll receive at least three books signed by one of us. Yeah!
Joyce M (jaman …@) *Â Janet Kerr (janet …@) *Â Mary Preston (maryp … @) *Â Liz V. (ebver … @) *Â Eric Alford (saddl … @)
Congratulations!
And … if you missed the hardcover edition of LOVE IS MURDER, the romantic suspense anthology edited by Sandra Brown, it’s now out in paperback! AND one week from today, an all-new digital Lucy Kincaid novella will be available: Reckless. Click here for an excerpt and more!
Now …. Back to books! Talk! What book were you forced to read, maybe because of a teacher or a friend, that you thought you would hate, but you really loved?
Allison Brennan is a New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of nearly three dozen romantic thrillers and mysteries, including the Lucy Kincaid series and the Max Revere series. She lives in Northern California with her husband, five children, and assorted pets.
I’ve always been a voracious reader– I learnt to read ridiculously early because I shared a room with my older sister who was two years ahead of me in school and kept reading out loud to our mum to practise her skills. Being the curious (read: annoying :P) younger sibling I was, I’d crawl into bed with her and attempt to follow along, learning to put sounds & letters together in two languages. My friends’ parents found this highly amusing– they’d pull out these gigantic engineering books at their kids’ birthday parties and have me read aloud. In Spanish. Having a 5-year-old describe the structural considerations of building a cable-stayed bridge is apparently hilarious! (Must be civil engineer humour…)
Then I moved halfway across the world and was (along with my siblings) the only Western kid at school, and between being ridiculously shy and not speaking Chinese (‘British colony’ is a relative term, haha), I practically lived in the school library and became the book ‘ho I am today. I read everything: children’s books, what today would probably be YA-ish, all of Agatha Christie’s Poirot novels, Stephen King, the ‘classics’… then a friend lent me Julie Garwood’s THE SECRET in Grade 6 or 7, and I started down the path to romance. Nowadays, my tastes lean mostly toward romantic suspense and thrillers, with some contemporaries thrown in to balance out the dead bodies, but I’ll still read pretty much anything. Except paranormal– I just can’t get into the whole vampire/werewolf/shapeshifter/etc. thing!
Book I had to read and was sure I was going to hate but ended up really enjoying? I had to read Laura Esquivel’s LIKE WATER FOR CHOCOLATE (in Spanish) for my International Baccalaureate Spanish literature class in secondary school and nearly cried at the prospect. I don’t enjoy magical realism at all (apologies to any avid Gabriel GarcÃa Márquez fans, but LOVE IN THE TIME OF CHOLERA and ONE HUNDRED YEARS OF SOLITUDE were painful to get through, especially in Spanish *shudder*), but I ended up really liking this one. The film was quite good as well.
Hi Cris — what a fascinating childhood! We have friends who kids are tri-lingual, growing up speaking Spanish (grandmother), Farsi (mother) and English. I’ve heard that it’s much easier for young kids to adopt multiple languages fluently than for an adult to learn a new language.
I didn’t read Julie Garwood’s historical romance (I don’t read a lot of historical) but I remember my first Julie Garwood romantic suspense: KILLJOY. Still love that book!
I remember being forced to read Romeo and Juliet by our dictator of a 9th grade English teacher. I knew I’d hate it as much as I hated him, but I didn’t. I loved it. Showed him.
LOL, you sound like you were stubborn …. 🙂
I got hooked on Stephen King at a young age, too! My first King book was PET CEMETARY. So scary!
A friend told me I needed to read OUTLANDER, which she described as a time travel book. I didn’t think I would like it at all but I was so very wrong. Love that book.
I have OUTLANDER just have never read it. I bought a special issue for Kelly and had Galbadon sign it at one of the Thrillerfests, but I don’t think Kelly has read it either …
You need to read Outlander! That series made me sit down and try writing. It kills me to wait years between each book. Luckily she had four books out when I read the first one. I immediately plowed through the rest. Kids were neglected, house was filthy…
Well, I will ALWAYS choose reading over cleaning …
I always thought of To Kill a Mockingbird as a book from a high school reading list I never had to read. But I read it two summers ago and couldn’t put it down!
Also love romantic suspense by you and Nora!
Thanks Vicki! I really loved To Kill a Mockingbird, I read it as a high school freshman. I didn’t dread it like Hamlet!
My most recent literary surprise was The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows. I read mostly thrillers and romantic suspense, with the occasional sci fi or horror novel thrown in for fun. I was sure Guernsey was going to be a yawner, but I was wrong. It was fabulous.
We read the same! I wish I had more time to check out other books … but this year I have been swamped with judging contests and when you HAVE to read something, it’s not as fun …
Well, other than the obvious ones–War and Peace, The Jungle, The Great Gatsby–I don’t think I’ve ever been forced to read a book. I’ve always been an inveterate reader. I did have to read the Chronicles of Narnia for a religious philosophy class in college. Those “kids” books surprised me. And I just finished reading a book that I didn’t think I’d finish past the first chapter. After a recommendation, I checked it out of the library because the premise sounded interesting, even though it is YA and I don’t normally read YA. It’s second strike came when I discovered it is written in first person present POV. I HATE THAT!
At bedtime, I figured I’d read a few minutes and fall asleep. But I opened the book, read the prologue, read the first chapter, and at sunrise the next morning, I finished the book. Melina Marchetta’s JELLICOE ROAD just blew me away.
I don’t like first person present, either, but my YA daughter is so used to it that it doesn’t faze her at all. I don’t recall many books, if any, that I read growing up in first person present.
I love the Chronicles of Narnia. I read them as a child. My 9 year old daughter is reading the series now (though, she’s skipping the books that don’t have Lucy and gang in them … )
I don’t remember whether it was for a high school class or college, but I was pretty sure I was going to hate Herman Melville’s “Moby Dick.” As it turned out, I could hardly put it down.
I never had to read Moby Dick, and therefore I didn’t 🙂 I read The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway?), and it was fine — didn’t love or hate it. I think sometimes, books don’t resonate with us because of our age or where we are in life. In high school, it just didn’t click with me. But I remember reading Billy Budd by Melville as a sophomore and it was very melancholy …
I thought A Modern Witch by Debora Geary would be the standard chick lit fare, but I was very, very happy to be proven wrong! I’ve plowed through A Modern Witch as well as A Hidden Witch, and I’m trying to pace myself so that I can at least get through all the books so I have a very short time to wait prior to the last book in the series coming out in June.
LOL — I sometimes hate waiting in between books … though fortunately, I read enough series that I’m usually good! 🙂
I remember having to call my mother when I was at the public library trying to check out a book. the librarian thought it was to mature for me and did not want to let me have it. My mother told her any book I wanted to read was okay with her. It was a Victoria Holt book and I was 12 or 13. I also read a lot of Stephen King. the one book that I had to read for a class that I thought I would not like was Black Like Me.. although I would probably never pick it up to re-read it was good.
I read Black Like Me because it was on my mom’s bookshelf. I honestly don’t remember whether I liked it or not (I was probably 11 or 12 when I read it and I’m sure it went over my head on many levels.) but I did finish it. I used to have a thing where I had to finish EVERY book I started. In fact, I still have a very hard time not finishing a book even if I don’t like it. I’ve gotten better about that — there are far too many books out there to waste time on books I just don’t like.
Over on my facebook fan page, I asked readers what book they didn’t want to read that they ended up liking, and started to think about what book that was for me. It was HAMLET that I had to read when I was a HS junior. I’m not a Shakepeare fan. I APPRECIATE him now, but that’s only after having read HAMLET.
Many years ago I belonged to the Doubleday Book Club. I loved when you first signed up and got your first 5 or 6 books. I must have transposed a number because I ended up with Lonesome Dove by Larry McMurty. It was too much of a hasass to mail back so I decided to keep it. One day I finally read it (I think the mini-series was coming out soon) so I wanted to read the book first. OMGoodness! What a book. I think it is about the only time that a movie and book have been equally good.
That taught me to never say no to a genre I don’t normally read.
Great story! My mom was a member of the Mystery Guild for years and years.
I think I meant to say hassle. LOL
forced to read a lot of books for school; didn’t really like them
I think that’s the case with school sometimes … Fortunately, I loved to read and had some great teachers who let us read widely.
In high school we read To Kill a Mockingbird and The Great Gatsby. Neither seemed like something I would but they ended up being 2 of my favorite books!
To Kill a Mockingbird, loved it then, still love it. My 14yo is now reading it. She was not looking forward to it, just asked her–“I like it!”
I also grew up in the 1980’s and I got my first library card when I was 7 so that would’ve been 1979.
I loved Trixie Belden (I had quite a few that I owned) and also the Three Investigators (read a lot of them from the library). I also read Nancy Drew and the Hardy Boys. My dad bought me most of them, the original blue and yellow covers. There were also some of the older ones from the 40’s or 50’s. He got a lot of the books at flea markets.
I read Judy Blume, too. I read some of my mother’s books including some of the stories in her Reader’s Digest Condensed Books. I remember one was called The Melodeon and one was The Fan about an actress that was being stalked. I also read two of her horror novels, Ghost House and Ghost House Revenge, when I was about nine. The author was Claire McNally or McNully? I’m sure I was too young for them! I think I reread them when I was about 13 or 14.
Other favorite children’s books are The House of Thirty Cats – Mary Calhoun, The Ghost Next Door – Wylly Folk St. John, and The Ghosts – Antonia Barber, which was made into a movie called The Amazing Mr. Blunden. I saw it on Nickelodeon when I was a kid. I reread those books a lot and still have them. The Silver Crown by Robert C. O’Brien was good and I probably read that two or three times.
When I was around 13 I got into Sherlock Holmes, Agatha Christie, and other British mysteries. Sometimes I reread those, but I don’t do a lot of rereading because I have tons of books of my own and ones I want to read from the library.
Once when I was a teenager a librarian told me I shouldn’t be reading Agatha Christie! I had quite a few of her books that I was checking out. I looked young for my age but it’s not like I was reading Stephen King or something with bad language in it! That’s the stereotype of a strict, stuffy librarian.
Now I read cozy mysteries, true ghost stories, and Jane Austen sequels. I also read Y.A. and currently I’m reading Andrew Lane’s Young Sherlock Holmes series. I love it! I like Y.A. with paranormal or historical themes. I’ve also read some romances in the past and started out reading Cassie Edwards and other Indian romances. I like Regency romances.
I belong to the Mystery Guild and love to see upcoming titles on their website and look at the magazine I get in the mail.
Can’t stand books told in the present tense and won’t read them. A lot may be Y.A., but there are also some for adults.
I’m not a fan of books in present tense, either. It takes a while to get used to … but there are exceptions.
Likeb sweet valley highs books