Betsy Robinson's Blog - Posts Tagged "reading"

I’m a voracious reader as well as a writer, and therefore a lot of my journalism these days focuses on books.

I knew nothing about Oh Reader magazine except that they might be open to articles I’m interested in writing. And I was thrilled when editor Gemma Peckham accepted a piece about finding hilarious books by female writers. She has published it, under the title “Laughing with the Ladies,” in the December 2022 (issue 010) Oh Reader and, oh boy, am I surprised and grateful for the discovery of this magazine.

I just finished reading it cover to cover, and this is a reader’s heaven.

Of course, I like my own piece, detailing the difficulty of finding pee-in-your-pants funny books by women, why that has been a problem, and a list with short descriptions of the 13 books that I’ve discovered since I began my quest eight years ago.

But there’s more.

My favorite stories: how being raised Hindu affected the writer’s (Thulasi Seshan) reverence for physical books; the story of a neighbor’s book collection and how reading it after her demise affected the author (Rebecca Duras); a fittingly short essay by a writer (Steven Allison) who couldn’t read due to his ADHD about the unlikely way he learned he can read whole books; and a deeply moving contemplation by a bookseller (Laura Bridgewater) about what she learned was the true gift of the bookseller-customer interaction.

Not only are the articles wonderful, but the art, layout, and high-quality paper make this a magazine to save.

The December issue will be on magazine stands on December 8, 2022, and you can learn more at Oh Reader.com.

When I was a kid I used to hole up in my room listening to radio plays.

It occurs to me that people who love audio books may have that same love.



So I made a 3 minute 43 second radio play out of a scene from The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg.

For those who have read the novel, it's the scene where Zelda learns to drive from her errant student Donny Sherman:

The Driving Lesson

1. Today, Jan. 7th, is the relaunch of a second edition of my funny novel The Last Will & Testament of Zelda McFigg, revised and republished when it went out of print.

The Humorous Story of a One-Woman Train Wreck—Winner of Black Lawrence Press's Big Moose Prize

Meet Zelda McFigg. She is 4-feet 11-inches tall, 237 pounds, and convinced that she could be somebody, if only someone would recognize her inner beauty and star quality. Cousin to Ignatius J. Reilly (A Confederacy of Dunces) and Homer Simpson, Zelda runs away from home at age 14, and at age 49 ¼ writes this furiously funny memoir to "set the record straight" about her lifetime of indiscretions. (Video: https://youtu.be/baVdveWdtao)

paperback
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DQS8DXJ8
https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-last...

Bookshop.org ebook
ebook

kindle
https://www.amazon.com/Last-Will-Test...

kobo
https://www.kobo.com/us/en/ebook/the-...

Nook
https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-...


2. I am thrilled to have my essay "Whole-Body Reading" in the winter issue #018 of Oh Reader magazine. It's about my visceral experience reading and why it's visceral—why some books work on a body level and some don't. It's a piece I've wanted to write for a long time, including an explanation of what I qualify as a story that "had to be written"—the books that send my body into movement and noise.

You can get the winter issue, #018 at Barnes & Noble stores magazine sections. And hopefully it will be available soon on www.OhReader.com.

Happy New Year,
Betsy