Suddenly Ann Cleeves Is Everywhere

The Great Shelf Collapse of 2021 has turned into the perfect opportunity for me to go through lots of stuff that I've been keeping over the years for what turns out to have been no good reason. I've spent hours sorting through it all, and I've gladly parted with a number of books, puzzles, articles of clothing, etc. that were desperately in need of a better home. Surprisingly, it's all been kind of fun (despite the $400 closet makeover now required) because I've uncovered a few "gems" that I'd forgotten all about - especially a few books I thought I may have rashly disposed of years earlier. 

Other than that, I've been reading Ann Cleeves's first Vera Stanhope novel, The Crow Trap. My edition of the book is 535 pages long and this is one of the most complicated mysteries I've read in a while...so many characters, with so many individual histories, and so many interconnections that date back a generation or two. That means there is a lot of room for red herrings and wrong conclusions, and Cleeves makes the most of them. It also means that I'm doing something I seldom do; I'm highlighting certain passages for later reference and jotting down a few notes in the margins. I don't think I would do that with most any hard covers, but I'm reading the deluxe paperback version of The Crow Trap, and it doesn't bother me too much to mark this one up even though it's a brand new copy. (I'm weird that way.)

Ann Cleeves seems to be everywhere I turn these days. She's featured in a great interview in the current issue of Mystery Scene and Vera Stanhope is featured in a separate article in the same issue titled "Senior Sleuths." That article compares older fictional detectives like:

• Agatha Christie's Jane Marple and Hercule Poirot
• Michael Connelly's Harry Bosch
• James Lee Burke's Dave Robicheaux
• Ian Rankin's John Rebus
• Sara Paretsky's V.I. Warshawski
• Ruth Rendell's Reginald Wexford
• Lawrence Block's Matthew Scudder 
• John Sanford's Lucas Davenport

to a crop of older detectives "still kicking butt" in today's popular fiction. Connelly, Burke, Rankin, and Paretsky are still adding books in their own series, so the use of the word "still" is not quite appropriate, but these are the older detectives that get special attention in the article:

• M.C. Beaton's Agatha Raisin
• Ann Cleeves's Vera Stanhope
• Daniel Friedman's Buck Schatz
• Naomi Hirahara's Mas Arai
• Lee Hollis's Poppy Harmon
• Ragnar Jónasson's Hulda Hermannsdóttir
• Barbara Nelly's Blanche White
• Scott Turow's Sandy Stern

I've read way over 100 novels from that first bunch but only a few from the second, so I plan to explore that list a lot more. I've found over the years, probably as a function of my own aging, that I particularly enjoy reading about fictional detectives who may have lost a step or two, men and women who are having to learn little tricks to compensate for their aging if they are to stay in the game much longer.

And then Ann Cleeves popped up yesterday in a live interview as part of this year's Texas Book Festival, the annual festival started by Laura Bush way back when her husband was governor of Texas. The 45-minute interview did suffer a little from connectivity problems between England and Texas, especially toward the end, but I loved every minute of it. The interview can be accessed at this link if you have a little patience with it. You do have to register at CrowdCast, but you don't have to use that app to watch the interview because there is an option for watching it through your browser instead.

I've often envied people who only discover one of my very favorite writers really late because they then have the pleasure knowing that they have twenty, thirty, or even more wonderful books to experience for the first time. I'm starting to think this may have finally happened for me with my recent discovery of Ann Cleeves, the novelist, not just Ann Cleeves the creator of television series. 

And speaking of that difference. I've already seen the television version of The Crow Trap, and did not find it particularly impressive except for the Vera Stanhope and Joe Ashworth characters - and especially Brenda Blethyn's portrayal of Vera. I went back and re-watched the first 15 minutes of the television version last night, and I found it remarkably "dumbed down" as it's presented. I realize that there are only so many minutes to work with for television and movie screenplay writers, but this served as a good reminder that "the book is always better than the movie" and why that is so. 

Enough for now...only 58 pages to go in The Crow Trap, and I hear Vera calling me.

This May Be the Year I Go Back to the Texas Book Festival

Warning: Opinion Piece Approaching

It's almost (what used to be) my favorite time of the book year again. The Texas Book Festival is happening in Austin on October 26-27, and for many years was an event I anticipated almost exactly the way I anticipated Christmas morning when I was six years old. I started attending the festival just a couple of years after Laura Bush started it up while she and George W were living in the Texas Governor's Mansion, a much simpler time in more ways than one as it turns out.

A $100 "Festival Friends Pass" Gets Priority Access

Austin itself was a simpler place with a lot less traffic and a festival small enough for attendees to attend just about any session that they had an interest in. There was always going to be some overlap of sessions that made it hard to choose which one to attend, of course, but back in those days sessions were not "Selling Out" more than two months before the magic weekend (see Malcolm Gladwell, below). That, however, was before attendance went up so drastically (doubled, tripled, quadrupled?) without any seating-increase for the "big name author" sessions that the odds of getting in the door became pretty heavily stacked against anyone without a connection of some sort or a willingness to pay for a Disney World-like "fast pass."

And don't even get me started on the politics of the event and the city because that's another case of well-enough-not-being-left-alone. I reached a tipping point a couple of years ago when at least 75% of the sessions I attended featured authors and/or interviewers who spent much of their allotted time making snide remarks about one particular political party and its supporters. I mean, I get it, Austin is almost certainly the most liberal city in Texas, but unless I'm in a session about a political book, or one featuring a politician turned author, I'm not there to listen to the kind of nonsense I can get on any cable news channel right from my favorite chair the other 363 days of the year. So, I quit going to the book festival.

ALREADY Sold Out

Today, though, I've run across a list of the 300 or so authors who will be at the festival in late October, and there are a bunch of them I'd love to see: Tim O'Brien, Craig Johnson, Karl Malantes, Alexander McCall Smith, Stephen Harrigan and Malcolm Gladwell (I do realize these are all men), among them. Gladwell, however, is already sold out at $35 a pop for his October 26 appearance at a local church, and I have to assume that will be his only festival appearance. I do see that John Grisham's event that morning in the same venue still has some tickets available - and it gratifies my heart a bit to see that Gladwell has outsold Grisham (it's probably wrong to feel that way...but I do). 

And there are others on my list, including three women: Oscar Cásares, Joe Landsdale, Attica Locke, Elizabeth McCracken, and Leila Meacham. Douglas Brinkley, who used to be a must-see historian for me before he jumped off the political-craziness cliff, will also be there, I see. The good news about having 300 authors show up in one place on the same weekend is that I always leave the festival having discovered a dozen or so interesting new-to-me writers. That's always fun, so this will probably be the year I head back to Austin. I'll have to wait and see what kind of mood I'm in in October.

The Lone Star Book Festival Was a Hoot

I had an absolutely brilliant time at the Lone Star Book Festival today, and now I really wish I had been able to attend the Friday sessions as well as today's.  The festival was so well run that no one would have guessed that it's a first-time event for the Kingwood campus.

I already knew which of the early sessions I wanted to attend when I arrived at the school, but I left the afternoon wide open to see what surprises I might find - and I'm happy I did because the last session of the day was one I'll never forget.  In that one, thriller writer Jon Land set a new standard for author presentations that I doubt I'll see matched anytime soon.  He set the bar just that high.

Hipolito Acosta, Bill Crider, Stephanie Evans

First up, was a session that included the prolific Bill Crider, mystery writer Stephanie Evans, and true crime writer Hipolito Acosta.  I'm a longtime fan of Crider's writing, especially the two westerns he wrote in the nineties, but I was relatively unfamiliar with Acosta and Evans when the session began.  Stephanie Evans, as it turns out, writes a series of mysteries set in Sugar Land, a little town just outside Houston that is home to most of the city's professional athletes, because as she says, "a lot of people in Sugar Land need killing."  

As it turns out, the biggest surprise of the session was Acosta who is one of the most decorated border agents in the history of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service.  Acosta has turned his extraordinary memory into two true crime books already, with a third one coming soon.  The man's personal exploits as a border agent were astounding, and he uses a first person narrative in his books.

University of Chicago professor Jerry Coyne

After wandering around the Brazos Bookstore book tent, I headed over to my second session, this one featuring Jerry Coyne in a discussion of his 2015 book Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion Are Incompatible.  This one was interesting because, frankly, it takes guts to come to East Texas to discuss a book about atheism and "what it means to think scientifically, showing that honest doubts of science are better - and more noble - than the false certainties of religion."  Before Coyne arrived, an elderly gentleman I met in the first session promised out loud that he was going to challenge the author's premise and "exchange" books with him after the session.  The man (and I failed to catch his name) is an ex-minister and university professor who has authored several books in his time, so I was anticipating some fireworks.  It didn't happen because Coyne politely listened to his questions before effortlessly batting away each of his arguments.  One or two others in the audience did try to "preach" a little (as Coyne asked them not to do), but because Coyne had already previewed their arguments and his rebuttals as part of his presentation, they, too, got nowhere.  

Emily Fox Gordon, Ann McCutchen

Emily Fox Gordon, Ann McCutchen, and poet Rich Levy shared a session called "Truth Telling in Autobiographic Writing" that delved into the question of just how much a right authors have to tell someone else's story - even if their own overlaps with those stories.  Gordon and McCutchen are essayists and memoirists, but everything they had to say about their formats applied equally to Rich Levy's poetry.  I have to admit that I'm no fan of poetry, mainly because, for me, reading poetry is like reading a foreign language, but all five poems that Levy read appealed to me like no poetry ever has before - perhaps because his poems are so autobiographical and full of familiar situations and emotions.

John Land

My last session of the day was the biggest surprise to me because of how much fun author Jon Land made it.  Land was originally scheduled to share the session with Texas author Skip Hollandsworth (author of the brand new true crime book The Midnight Assassin) who had to cancel his participation.  Land, most recently author of seven Caitlin Strong crime thrillers, is a dynamic speaker who seems to have as much fun as his audience.  Because he was flying solo today, Land changed the focus of the session a little to present "ten reasons we all love thrillers."  I have to tell you, if you ever get a chance to attend a Jon Land reading, jump at it.  The guy is a great impersonator, knows the history of his genre intimately, and is as familiar with every aspect of today's pop culture as anyone out there.  That combination guarantees there will be no dull moments when Jon Land has the floor.  He is another of those guys I knew little about before today (even though 17 of his 28 novels have been bestsellers), but he's made me very curious about his Caitlin Strong books, especially since Strong is a fifth-generation Texas Ranger - an interesting job choice for his main character from a Rhode Island yankee like Jon Land.

So that's two book festivals in two weekends...and now that I'm spoiled, there are no more festivals in sight.  Just my luck.

The 2016 San Antonio Book Festival Was a Winner

In theory, I absolutely love book festivals.  Unfortunately, however, until just this weekend, I have been unable to test my theory anywhere but in Austin where the annual Texas Book Festival is held every October - having attended 14 of the 20 Texas Book Festivals held there to-date.  But, as of just yesterday, I can finally claim a second festival: the fourth annual San Antonio Book Festival…and what a treat that one was.

The San Antonio festival is, of course, on a smaller scale than Austin’s state festival, but it is every bit as satisfying as its big sister – and it offered something I’ve never run across it Austin: free breakfast burritos and bottles of juice from the wonderful folks at Whataburger.  (I have a bad habit of arriving at events way too early for my own comfort, but it really paid off this time because the burritos did not last all that long.)

You would never have guessed that this was only the fourth festival sponsored by the San Antonio Public Library and its more than 500 energetic volunteers.  Like I said earlier, I was there early – and I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything of this magnitude set up any more quickly and efficiently than what I witnessed here.  I did use my extra 90 minutes before the festival officially kicked off to orient myself to the festival map and locate some of the more difficult (but beautiful) side venues used for sessions with authors – in particular, Coates Chapel which I believe is part of the Southwest School of Art complex.

Whitley Strieber

I started the day (technically) inside the library for a presentation and discussion from author Whitley Strieber who has a new book out called The Super Natural.  Strieber is probably the person most responsible for popularizing the whole “alien abduction” thing, and I’ve never really bought into all of that.  But, let me tell you, that if you haven’t heard the author make his case in person (and I hadn’t until this session), you probably should not yet be a naysayer.  Strieber comes across as so completely sincere and nonchalant about his supposed experiences that I walked away from the session believing every word the man said.  Now I have some reading to catch up on.

Oh, and I said “technically” inside the library because this session, and the next one I attended, were held on the third floor terrace –completely open to the elements – and it was still a very cool, though not so windy, morning with temperatures in the upper fifties.

Stephen Harrigan

My second terrace session brought in a real favorite of mine, Stephen Harrigan, who talked largely about his research for A Friend of Mr. Lincoln, my favorite 2016 book so far.  I’ve been a fan of Harrigan’s writing for a long time, particularly his books Remember Ben Clayton and The Gates of the Alamo.  The poor guy was feeling terrible, his voice was going, and he could barely control his cough sometimes, but his insights into the new book were as intriguing as they were informative.  He could not have been at all comfortable sitting at the front of the terrace where he was more exposed to the morning breeze than the rest of us were, but he soldiered on and did a terrific job – and I snagged a signed copy of A Friend of Mr. Lincoln later in the day.

Jamie Brickhouse, David Crabb

Next, I moved on to Coates Chapel for a presentation called “Laughing with Myself: Comedic Memoirs” that was anchored by authors Jamie Brickhouse and David Crabb, each of whom who have recent memoirs in which their mothers feature prominently.  I read Brickhouse’s Dangerous When Wet a few weeks ago and was so moved by it, that this was a “don’t miss” session for me.  Crabb and Brickhouse are old friends who obviously get along well, and it showed in their dual-presentation. Ironically (as Brickhouse remarked), this was probably the least chapel-friendly session imaginable, but that hardly slowed anyone down.  This was fun.  Crabb’s book (which I have not read) is titled Bad Kid and it deals with the author’s youth in San Antonio and nearby Seguin, Texas.  Brickhouse, by the way, is from Beaumont, a part of the state I know all too well, and the first part of Dangerous When Wet is about growing up in Southeast Texas. 

Paulette Jiles, John C. Kerr

My final session of the day found me back in the library for a presentation by two authors I was totally unfamiliar with beforehand: Paulette Jiles and John C. Kerr.  I decided to attend this session after discovering that their books both dealt with periods of Texas history that I find particularly appealing: Civil War Reconstruction and Indian Wars.  Kerr’s novel, published by TCU Press, is titled The Silent Shore of Memory and deals with what happened in East Texas in the immediate aftermath of the Civil War. As Kerr points out, this portion of the state had more in common with the Old South states than it did with the rest of the Texas, and it was treated accordingly – very harshly and with little mercy.  Jiles’s novel (to be published in October by William Morrow) is called News of the World and largely deals with the white and Hispanic children who were so often kidnapped by the same Indian warriors who had massacred the rest of their families.  Jiles lives on a small ranch in the very part of the state where this was happening in the 1870s, and has a natural affinity for telling the story of these children who so often refused to remain with those who rescued them. 

I was particularly intrigued by the research that both authors did and how different, but equally effective, their methods were.  And I could not wait to get my hands on copies of the two books, so you can imagine how disappointed I was to learn that publication of News of the World was still more than six months away.  But I rushed out to the Barnes & Noble tent anyway to purchase a copy of Kerr’s book and headed back to the library to have it signed.  Well you can imagine my delight when, during my conversation with the two authors about their books, Paulette Jiles offered me a galley copy of hers on the spot…and signed it for me.  So I did end up coming home with both the books, and now I can’t wait to read them.

Congratulations, San Antonio, on a book festival you should all be proud of, one that I will likely be attending again…and again.  The only suggestion I would make (and it’s a minor thing, really) is that that you have a much larger tent for the Barnes & Noble people to sell books from next year.  Many of us hit that tent in a big hurry, trying to find a book, purchase it, and make it back to the signing area before the signing is over.  Having to wade through that many people, most of them in “browse mode,” while in a legitimate hurry is frustrating. 

Is Anybody Going to San Antone? Me...for the Book Festival

If all goes well this week, I'm heading to San Antonio Friday to attend the all-day-Saturday 2016 San Antonio Book Festival.  Believe it or not (and I find it hard to believe, myself), even though I live only 210 miles from the San Antonio Public Library, main site of the festival, I haven't been to San Antonio in more than 20 years, so this will be an interesting excursion.

The festival organizers have line up more than 80 authors for the various sessions and presentations, and there are a few I'm particularly looking forward to seeing since I've read several of the books being discussed.  I'm hoping to make the sessions by Stephen Harrigan (A Friend of Mr. Lincoln), Jamie Brickhouse (Dangerous When Wet), a second Stephen Harrigan session (Old Facts, New Fiction), and maybe that Literary Death Match that comes at the end of the day and features Jamie Brickhouse, David Craff, Joaquin Zihuatanejo, and Sara Benincasa.  

That probably seems like a small sampling of the eighty authors who will be there, but that's usually the way it goes, leaving some time for browsing the vendors, sampling the food, and plain old resting of the feet - and some time to work in last minute changes and additions to the schedule.  

Here's a video look at who's coming:

Attica Locke and Harry Hunsicker Discuss Writing (and their new books) at The Texas Book Festival

Authors Attica Locke & Harry Hunsicker

For my second session of this year’s festival, I walked way out to the “Texas Tent” for a presentation entitled “Trouble in Texas” that featured writers Attica Locke and Harry Hunsicker.  Locke was born and raised in Houston’s inner city and Hunsicker in one of Dallas’s suburbs, and their books are largely set in those two cities.  Locke, however, is currently involved in the hit television series Empire (a show which I’m only vaguely familiar with because I’ve seen the promos run between innings of baseball games) as both a producer and a scriptwriter. 

In fact, both began the session by trashing the growth patterns of their respective cities in comparison to that of Austin.  Locke commented that in Houston if someone finds an empty spot they “pour concrete on it” and Hunsicker that neither Houston nor Dallas have any respect for the historical buildings located within their boundaries.  Sadly enough, they are right.  In addition, Locke’s father ran for mayor of Houston in 2009 and, according to Ms. Locke, that was an ugly, ugly experience for the family. 

Neither of the authors pulls any punches in their novels.  Rather, they portray life in their home cities as they and their families experienced it first hand.  Surprisingly, though, both Locke and Hunsicker say that they have received very little negative feedback from readers in Dallas and Houston (probably because their readers understand and agree with them).  I get the impression that they are both striving for the “reality” they remember, but clearly both novelists often drift into noir fiction.  Locke’s novels can be very dark and intimidating because the Houston of the past that she portrays was not always a great place to live if you were black or Hispanic.  Hunsicker’s work is not nearly as bleak as Locke’s, but it seems to be a throwback to the days of Chandler and Hammett – and I love it for precisely that reason. 

Attica Locke first came to my attention with the 2009 novel Black Water Rising, a book that features a young Civil Rights Movement veteran and new lawyer called Jay Porter.  The story begins with an incident drawn from one of the author’s own childhood experiences in which a cry for help is heard while her family is enjoying a boat ride along Houston’s Buffalo Bayou.  For the young black men aboard the boat, the question as to whether or not they should respond to the plea for help is an issue touching on both their common sense and their individual codes of morality.  The novel captured Houston’s atmosphere so perfectly that I was able to recapture vivid memories of that era. 

Locke was at the festival to promote her third novel, Pleasantville, which finally continues Jay Porter’s story.  She mentioned at the festival that she was very reluctant to write any kind of sequel to Black Water Rising because of her fear that she could not possibly match the quality of that first book in another that used the same cast of characters.  The author seems to be a bit insecure about her immense talent, even going so far as to say that she “talks to someone every week about that.”

Harry Hunsicker is the author of two series set in Dallas.  His first three books feature Lee Henry Oswald, a man whose very name is certain to cause him problems in a city still scarred by one of the most infamous political assassinations in American history. The main character of Hunsicker’s three most recent books is John Cantrell – ex-cop, ex-DEA contractor.  I have read parts of both series and was entertained by both because the books are well plotted, funny, and intricate enough to satisfy mystery fans like me who prefer their mysteries to have lots of action and atmosphere.

Hunsicker was at the festival to promote his latest novel, The Grid, which is the third John Cantrell novel.  Very surprisingly to me, the author did not spend much time discussing his new book and seemed to prefer speaking of more general literary topics.  He even had some very informed and pointed questions for Attica Locke and seems to be a real fan of her writing. 

Hunsicker still works as real estate appraiser in the Dallas area, and he attributes that job, because it took him to parts of the city very different from the more affluent section of the city in which he spent his youth, as the source of his awakening to what the city of Dallas is really like.  He quipped that he was going to be a “literary writer for about a week” before he realized literary writing is not a strong suit of his.  His fans should be thankful that instead of putting down his pen forever, Mr. Hunsicker decided to try a different approach to his storytelling.

Both writers remarked that they do not “believe in” writer’s block and that, as Ms. Locke puts it, writer’s block “is just the inner critic not thinking the work is good enough.”  Hunsicker added that, “writer’s block is just a writer being self-indulgent.”  He suggests just sitting down and writing five sentences of “whatever” because usually one of the sentences is going to be “pretty good.”  And, according to him, there’s your kick-starter. 

Interestingly, and probably because her father is an attorney, Locke was asked if her first name had anything to do with the Atticus character in Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (the answer is no).  But it was the follow-up comments regarding the recent publication of the “new” Harper Lee novel that both authors made that intrigued me most about this part of the conversation.  Both of them feel very strongly that Harper Lee has been taken advantage of and can’t possibly realize how much her legacy has been damaged by release of the rather ordinary Go Set a Watchman.  They both feel very badly for Ms. Lee.

All in all, this was another great presentation and I ended up bringing home copies of both their books.  My TBR pile is growing ever higher as we speak…but I suppose that if you have to have a problem, that’s a good one to have.

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Margaret Atwood Presentation at 2015 Texas Book Festival

Official Texas Book Festival Photo - Author Margaret Atwood 

It was such a beautiful morning in Austin, showing all the signs of an approaching autumn season, that I really hated to head indoors immediately for my first session of the 2015 Texas Book Festival.  But my reluctance disappeared when I remembered that I was there an hour early for one reason: to attend Margaret Atwood’s presentation on her latest novel, The Heart Goes Last.  At this point, I’m going to have to admit an embarrassing thing about my reading relationship with Atwood; I have never read her.  As in Never Ever.  And how that happened, I can’t explain.  After all, I have several of her books around the house (and now I own a signed copy of The Heart Goes Last).  Heck, I’ve had a first edition copy of Cat’s Eye on my shelves since February 1989 when it was first published.  I know that she’s a major writer of our times, etc., but somehow or another I’ve never read her.  Weird, I know.

As a reflection of Atwood’s literary prestige and popularity, her presentation was one of the few given inside the chambers of either the Texas Senate or the Texas House of Representatives.  (The vast majority of the presentations are made in rooms located in the basement area of the building or outside under the cover of large tents.)  The line was long and moved slowly into the lower level of the House meeting area, and I was convinced that I would be moved to the upstairs gallery despite having been lined up for a bit over an hour, but I got lucky and was one of the last dozen or so to be able to squeeze in downstairs.  So I was off to a good start.

Margaret Atwood is everything I heard she was: funny, personable, bright, energetic, opinionated, adventuresome, and well-versed on the changes in bookselling.  Kelly Luce, the session moderator, began the session with a series of interesting questions to Atwood but made sure to save some time at the end for what turned out to be several really good questions from the audience.  First up, of course, was a question about the new book.  Atwood mentioned that The Heart Goes Last, which is 306-page novel, actually began as a series of short stories for Playboy magazine (she laughed about the magazine’s recent announcement that it would no longer focus on nude pictures, meaning that people really will be buying it for the “articles” now) but that her publisher finally said to her “why not make this into a real book.”  From there, the author went on to discus the serialization techniques of Charles Dickens, mentioning as a side note that she had once been allowed to sign her name with the very quill pen Dickens used to write his books, and pointed out that some of Dickens’s books were changed to suit the feedback he got from his weekly readers (especially regarding his extra attention - as the book evolved - to those characters which were proving to be the most popular).

 It was while discussing her own writing techniques and the structure of her books that Atwood most often showed her rather self-deprecating sense of humor.  For instance, when discussing how a writer “suffers” for her art, she said that she “had a little bit too much fun because I know you should suffer.  And I did.  But not too much…you don’t want to suffer too much at my age.” 

Here are a few other interesting tidbits that I managed to jot down during the presentation:

·      Atwood is not an “outliner” of novels and stories.  As she put it, she prefers to see them “grow up.”  She went on to remark that teachers of her work can see the structure because they have the whole book in front of them to teach from, while she never had that advantage during the writing process.

·      She is a fan of “fan fiction” and gave a brief history of fan fiction, including the fact that it’s been around forever, mentioning that Don Quixote was covered by dozens of “fan writers” hoping to cash in on the book’s characters – and that some of Shakespeare’s writing could be characterized as fan fiction.

·      Atwood mentioned two interesting projects of which she is a part.  The first involves her re-writing of Shakespeare’s The Tempest and the second is one in which she has written one, of what will eventually be 100 novels or stories, that will be sealed up for 100 years before they are “opened” and made available to the public.  The work is sealed away in Oslo, Norway.

·      The author took note (as so many authors have before her) of the setting and mentioned that she heard “laws are made here.”  She went on (again, as usual) to speak of the Texas laws that she wishes she could change from her seat in the chamber: penal laws, women’s right issues, etc.  No surprises here, and I found myself starting to tune her out, so I was happy when she moved on to something else.

·      Atwood closed the session by addressing public libraries and how important they are to society.  Interestingly enough, the library issue was brought up by a questioner in the audience who mentioned the many millions of dollars Austin is spending to build a new library while, at the same time, the current library sits largely empty and unused.  She considers access to books in libraries to be a “cornerstone of democracy” and said that the coke-addled mayor of Toronto was finally pushed out of office on that issue alone.  Apparently, he wanted to cut library funding and the voters were having none of it.

I enjoyed the session most, I think, because of the access that Atwood allows to her feelings and personality.  She is open, sometimes blunt, and pretty much always interesting.  And this time around, I’m certain that I’ll be reading a few Margaret Atwood novels…starting with The Heart Goes Last.

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