Marilyn
asked
Heather Lende:
I just finished reading Find the Good and have recommended it to everyone I know. I, too, am a small town obituary writer, always look for the good, and habitually walk on the sunny side of the street. I believe I may have passed your way a few years ago on an Alaskan cruise. My question - What are at lease five of your all-time favorite books?
Heather Lende
Thank you for writing me! That is a hard question. (They tend to be ones I just read.) But, here are five infulential books that I loved:
Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, Saint Maybe Anne Tyler, Ellen Gilchrist stories- Drunk with Love or Victory over Japan, or anything she's ever written.. and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (and all of her novels.) I love Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs and that Old Cape Cod Magic, I loved Stewart O'Nan's Emily Alone and The Odds, Ann Patchett, Anna Quindlen, Larry McMurtry and Ivan Doig-- and Kent Haruf!! Read his novels Plainsong, Benediction, Eventide (I think?) and Our Soul's at Night in order. Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird are favorites, and for obit writers, Marilyn Johnson's The Dead Beat is great, as is The Last Word, the NY Times book of obituaries. Non fiction favorites are Calvin Trillin's essays, Ruth Reichl, and have you read Simon Winchester? He's a witty Englishman who writes well about big things-- China, the making of the Oxford dictionary.. that sort of thing. One more, a poet ( I love poetry, Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins.. Thomas Lynch is his name, and he's an undertaker. Find him, you will be glad. I also can get stuck for a whole weekend in a Jo-Ann Mapson novel, and she has about 12 so that's good news. Anyway, I better stop now. Or I never will.
Cross Creek by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings, A Prayer for Owen Meany by John Irving, Saint Maybe Anne Tyler, Ellen Gilchrist stories- Drunk with Love or Victory over Japan, or anything she's ever written.. and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead (and all of her novels.) I love Richard Russo, Bridge of Sighs and that Old Cape Cod Magic, I loved Stewart O'Nan's Emily Alone and The Odds, Ann Patchett, Anna Quindlen, Larry McMurtry and Ivan Doig-- and Kent Haruf!! Read his novels Plainsong, Benediction, Eventide (I think?) and Our Soul's at Night in order. Stephen King's On Writing and Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird are favorites, and for obit writers, Marilyn Johnson's The Dead Beat is great, as is The Last Word, the NY Times book of obituaries. Non fiction favorites are Calvin Trillin's essays, Ruth Reichl, and have you read Simon Winchester? He's a witty Englishman who writes well about big things-- China, the making of the Oxford dictionary.. that sort of thing. One more, a poet ( I love poetry, Mary Oliver, Jane Kenyon, Billy Collins.. Thomas Lynch is his name, and he's an undertaker. Find him, you will be glad. I also can get stuck for a whole weekend in a Jo-Ann Mapson novel, and she has about 12 so that's good news. Anyway, I better stop now. Or I never will.
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Nov 08, 2015 02:50PM
Nov 08, 2015 05:04PM