I went off for two weeks in the woods and finished a first draft of my next (and maybe last) murder mystery in the Juliet Applebaum series. I took along a lot of dead Russians to read, because I was in Washington State where it rains all the time, and I figured rainy, cold days curled up in front of a wood stove just cry out for Russians. They're down at the bottom of the log. I also read some Chekhov. Finally.

Searching for Caleb by Anne Tyler
I read this as I finished the final rewrites for my book that is now called Love and Other Impossible Pursuits. Anne Tyler is a perfect role model for me as a writer. High aspirations are good for a person. I liked this book very much, despite the fact that the main character is a fortune-teller. I usually hate free spirits, and I was afraid she'd be one. But she was significantly less of a twit than I had feared.

The Photograph by Penelope Lively
She's got excellent style, does Ms. Lively. And I liked this book. I sort of wish it had been about more, though. It started with this nice premise, a man who finds a photograph of his dead wife holding another man's hand, and then it seemed like she just wasn't sure what to do with it.

She is Me by Cathleen Schine
The next time I get grief for writing an unsympathetic main character, I'm going to point my critics to this book.

Case Histories by Kate Atkinson
I love Kate Atkinson. I really do. In a perfect world she would be able to call this book a mystery without having her literary credentials trashed. But the world isn't perfect, now, is it?

Highwire Moon by Susan Straight
Damn it, I was going to write this book! I mean, I had a plot sitting in the back of my head that was exactly this - woman comes to America, gives birth, gets picked up by the INS and cannot get back to her baby. I can't believe it. Well, Ms. Straight did it better than I could have, I expect.

The Follow by Linda Spalding
Okay, so I know Linda. But I still loved this book. Seriously. I'm not just bullshitting to keep from embarrassing myself in front of a friend. I can believe what that NUT JOB Birute Galdikas is doing in Borneo. She's got to be stopped. I worked myself up into such a rage over this that I called Linda to holler my fury. She, of course, had put all this out of her mind years ago.

Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
I'm reading this again because it's important to the next novel I'm going to write. I won't say anything more. Also, I'll say this: the main character is such a goddamn wet blanket! Still, love the gothic romances. I used to read them compulsively when I was in Junior High School. I wish more of them were written this well.

Liars and Saints by Maile Meloy
I liked this book very much, although as often happens with family sagas, I sort of resented being dragged out of one character's point of view and into her child's, and then into that of the next generation.

An Unquiet Mind by Kay Redfield Jamison
Perhaps my interest in the subject matter of this book has more to do with my own issues than with anything else, but I found it very fascinating. The writing was alternately beautiful and then sort of clunky but I was rapt by this woman's story. She has very serious manic-depressive disorder. I'm mildly bipolar from a family where the Lithium river runs wide and deep. So it had personal resonance.

Touched With Fire by Kay Redfied Jamison
So of course the next thing I did was read this. I actually sort of skimmed it, dropping into sections and reading them. She goes a little too in depth into various chapters to hold my interest for long. However, it's incredibly comforting for someone like me to read this book. I've always felt like such a literary fraud. I didn't spend my life longing to write, I didn't do an MFA. But, now that I realize that I'm bipolar just like William Blake, Lord Byron, Emily Dickenson, Virginia Woolf, Victor Hugo, Nikolai Gogol, Henry James, Mary Shelley and a whole lot more, I feel like maybe I do come by my writing aspirations naturally, after all.

Fathers and Sons by Ivan Turgenev
This is part of my Nabokov plan of self-improvement. This book was a delight. Funny and tragic. And wouldn't Vlad be enraged by my one line, rather trite, capsulation of the novel?

The Overcoat by Nikolai Gogol
All right, I know it's not a novel, it's just a short story, but I read the accompanying Nabokov lecture, and I just loved this story so much I had to put it in here. It was so incredibly sad and awful.

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
This translation is remarkable. I'm just so sad that Pevear and Voloshonsky had to deal with the horror of not selling well after being selected by Oprah. I think it sold upwards of three hundred thousand copies, which is only a failure if you expected to move a million units. Otherwise, the idea that three hundred thousand people immersed themselves in this complicated novel is sort of wonderful. Tolstoy is my kind of writer, ornate and histrionic, but with a sharp sense of humor and irony. What, however, was with all the awful Levin sections? I mean, do we really need that much postulating on various farming techniques and ideologies? I have to admit I started skipping those.

I'm updating early because I'm sick in bed and don't want to work on my novel right now. So there's not too much to report. Highlight was the Roth, I guess. If the paranoid panic it inspired can be described as a highlight.

The Plot Against America by Philip Roth
As someone who honestly believes that it's entirely possible that the entire American nation could rise up and put the Jews in concentration camps (Really, I do. Witness the Japanese internment camps. Witness the rhetoric surrounding AIDS. Witness the anti-semitism in Europe), this novel had me up half the night. I was basically packing my family's suitcases. It's a chilling novel, marvelous although not perfect. He's a brilliant writer, but even the geniuses among us could use the benefit of some editorial guidance.

The Little Girls by Elizabeth Bowen
Dated but languidly lovely.

Like Life by Lorrie Moore
Lorrie Moore is an inspiration to me. I begin my work day by reading one of her short stories. Her prose is pitch-perfect. Funny, tragic. Beautiful.

The Town That Forgot How to Breathe by Kenneth J. Harvey
This book was, I don't know. Weird, I guess. I sort of liked it. I wanted it to like it. I did. I did like it. I really did. Why didn't I pick it up and read it with more excitement?

Father's Day by Philip Galanas
Philip and I used to work together at a big fancy-pants law firm in New York. I love that we both abandoned the world of billable hours for lounging in our pjs and writing all day! This is a great read.

The Good People of New York by Thisbe Nissen
She's a really good writer, Ms. Nissen, but I just wanted to stick with the first point of view character.

Dream of the Blue Room by Michelle Richmond
MacAdam Cage makes such gorgeous books, and Michelle is a lovely woman. I enjoyed this book tremendously, although I feel pretty desperate about the environmental situation in China. Man it's a hellish nightmare there now.

The Position by Meg Wolitzer
I like Meg Wolitzer a lot, and I liked this book very much. I feel a certain kinship with her as a writer, although maybe that's presumptuous of me.

Graceland by Chris Abani
I finished this book feeling so completely hopeless about Nigeria. I'm overwhelmed with admiration for Abani, who not only survived incredible travails, but manages to have such a sense of humor.

I can’t even remember how long it’s been since I’ve updated this book log. I’ve been busy. I’ve been juggling two books, and now the teleplay to the Mommy Track TV series, which may or may not happen on Lifetime. I’m also in a fit of semiconstant panic about the election. My current horror is that the moron “anarchists” will play right into Karl Rove’s hands by engaging in violent demonstrations during the Republican Convention. Nothing will send swing voters over to Bush’s camp like the image of some idiot tossing a Molotov cocktail through a New York City storefront.

Truth and Beauty by Ann Patchett
Reading this book was a strange experience in many ways. Amanda’s death was, and still is fresh in my mind, and reading about such raw grief was hard. There were other things...how, well, psycho, Lucy Grealy seemed through Ann’s eyes. The symbiotic intensity of the relationship, how much it seemed like one person gnawing another’s limbs and the other proudly, happily extending her arm to be chewed. Anyway. Worth the read, definitely.

Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy
Well, of course I had to read this next. I’m not sure she was quite as brilliant a writer as others (and she herself) seemed to think. There’s so much missing from this story, but it’s pretty incredible nonetheless. Harsh and compelling as all hell. I read it in like a day.

The Magician’s Assistant by Ann Patchett
Now, this novel I just loved. Loved. I can’t really explain why, but I was completely swept up in it. I promise I’m done with this Ann Patchett/Lucy Grealy tear, by the way, though I did read this horrible article by Lucy Grealy’s sister in the Guardian that just made me feel sorry for everyone. It seemed so gratuitously mean, and that clearly the person she is angry at is her sister. In any case, none of this is any of our business and should be fought out in a living room somewhere, with slammed doors and bitter, recriminatory emails, not in the pages of major newspapers.

Picturing Will by Ann Beattie
I read this book because I am writing a novel about a little boy named William, and freaked out when I saw this. It’s pretty good. I hope I don’t suffer horribly by comparison.

Our Man in Havana by Graham Greene
He is just so awesome. Everyone should read Graham Greene. I can’t believe it took me until now to read this book.

Crossing California by Adam Langer
I got not one, not two, but THREE free copies of this book. I guess Riverhead is really pushing it hard. I liked it. It was funny, especially the Jewish rock band guy.

Goodbye Without Leaving by Laurie Colwin
She’s a wonderful writer, and it’s tragic that she died so young.

Country of Origin by Don Lee
This is a pretty good novel, although if the writer gave me one more descriptive sentence about the main character I was going to track him down and tattoo “show, don’t tell” onto his ass.

Riven Rock by T.C. Boyle
I love the sense of period in this novel. The insane character was fabulous, but I wished for a bit more with the female characters.

The Seventh Beggar by Pearl Abraham
I adored her first novel, and this one left me a little confused. I’m not so much into the whole mysticism thing. But she’s a terrific writer.

What Was She Thinking by Zoe Heller
Excellent unreliable, nasty-as-hell narrator. I enjoyed this novel tremendously, although I really didn’t feel the attraction for the young boy, and I think it’s possible to get that across. My kids had this 15 year old babysitter once who was absolutely beautiful, and had I been a totally different person with no scruples, and no marriage...which is to say, I’d never do anything, but I understand that the attraction exists, and I think there must be a way to describe it. Now someone will probably report me to the Department of Social Services.

Gone by Helena Echlin
Helena is a lovely writer, and I liked this book very much. My three year old and Helena became fast friends at a party last month.

Map of Love by Ahdaf Soueif
This book is appallingly bad, and the Booker people are out of their collective minds. I mean, good GOD. What are they thinking, putting this tripe on their short list? With the overblown metaphors and the ludicrous political diatribes? Will someone please let me know if I write like this so that I can become an underwear saleswoman?

The Bigamist’s Daughter by Alice McDermott
She may be one of my favorite writers ever. This isn’t Charming Billy, and the ending isn’t quite as satisfying as you’ll want it to be, but it’s still a marvelous book, and after Map of Love I needed something to cleanse my palette of the lingering horror.

Jack by A.M. Homes
This is a great novel for young adults. It’s got a fairly typical Y.A. narrator of a certain familiar kind (you know, more honest and “real” than the adults around him), and the prose is accessible. I'm going to make Sophie read it.

The Tenants of Moonbloom by Edward Lewis Wallant
I loved this novel. I loved it, and I was rooting for Moonbloom so damn hard. Man, you just despair for the world sometimes, and for the tiny efforts of one small man.

Life with Jeeves by P.G. Wodehouse
This is actually three novels in one, and no one should read three Jeeves novels in a stretch because they are all the same. They’re terrific, and very funny, but ultimately, the joke is exactly the same: Jeeves is smarter than his dopey boss and solves the problem, and his dopey boss agrees to stop wearing some hideous piece of clothing of which Jeeves does not approve. I mean, they are funny. Really funny, sometimes. But not all at once.

Hello to the Cannibals by Richard Bausch
I hereby declare a moratorium on men of a certain age writing from the point of view of young women. I will not allow it anymore, because those of us who are women (even if the fact that we are approaching our fortieth birthday with terrifying inexorability precludes us from calling ourselves young) find too many embarrassing mistakes, the kind of things that make us fling a novel across the room in frustration. Plus--enough with the shifting time periods. Unless they are really and truly related, all they do is distract from one another. Will someone please remind me of this if I ever convince anyone to buy The Bloom Girls?

In Babylon by Marcel Moring
This novel is very, very European. By which I mean, if I were smarter and more sophisticated, I probably would have loved it.

The past couple of months have been pretty exciting reading-wise. I went off to MacDowell where I wrote the first hundred pages of a novel in two weeks (more or less in Morse Code, but still), and my inspirations are on this list.

The Translator by John Crowley
I loved this book even though it has none of Crowley's trademark other-world stuff. Okay, maybe it does. A tiny bit.

What I loved by Siri Hustvedt
This book was a good read, but somehow I wanted a little more. I don't know. Emotionally, maybe?

Love Invents Us by Amy Bloom
She's amazing, this woman. AMAZING. And she was married, at one time, to one of my favorite professors in college.

Use Me by Elissa Schappell
She writes so honestly, especially about mothering. I can't wait to read her next book.

Love in the Asylum by Lisa Carey
Lisa is still one of my favorites, and I haven't met her, we've just exchanged emails, so I get to keep my unbiased status.

An Invisible Sign of My Own by Aimee Bender
She's a beautiful writer, on a sentence level, and I know I could never do what she does. I needed a bit less distance, though.

Now is the Time to Open Your Heart by Alice Walker
I read this book because I interviewed Alice Walker, one of my favorite writers when I was in college, for the Commonwealth Club. I still haven't heard the show on NPR. If you do, let me know if I sound like a blithering idiot.

Natasha by David Bezmozgis
Expect great things from this fabulous young writer.

The Blindfold by Siri Hustvedt
Okay, so this is a good SHORT STORY COLLECTION but it is NOT a novel, and I really and truly resent being told that it is. As a novelist who spends a tremendous amount of time and energy worrying about the arc of her story and plot, it really pisses me off when publishers try to sell collections as novels. It does the author a disservice and makes a good book seem less well done.

The Path of Minor Planets by Andrew Sean Greer
Another marvel by Andrew Sean Greer. (My buddy and accomplice on the SF strip club scene. I'll reveal more later).

Drinking Coffee Elsewhere by Z.Z. Packer
One of my favorites this month. This woman's descriptions are tremendous. Exciting, vibrant. Everything good writing should be.

The Mermaids Singing by Lisa Carey
She's so much fun to read, and I think we actually are not dissimilar writers. At least I hope to be as good.

The Country of the Young by Lisa Carey
My favorite of Lisa's books.

Little Children by Tom Perrotta
I liked this book quite a bit, but you know what? He didn't get the female character right. He doesn't know what we talk about to one another. He doesn't get it. Alas.

Property by Valerie Martin
A wonderful novel. Truly. I love a juicily loathsome main character.

Holidays on Ice by David Sedaris
I was positively peeing in my pants I was laughing so hard.

The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
I'm so happy for Karen that this book is going to catapult her to a mainstream audience. This wonderful writer deserves it. I still love Sister Noon the best, though.

The Known World by Edward P. Jones
Okay, so the Pulitzer people were absolutely correct. This book is marvelous. MARVELOUS.

I have a cold and I'm grumpy, so forgive me if that comes out in this month's write-up. I'm off for two weeks at the MacDowell Colony so I will have many many novels to write about in a couple of months and will be in much better spirits.

A Life's Work: On Becoming a Mother by Rachel Cusk
The writing is beautiful, the book is totally me, and I loved every minute of it. I was screaming, "Amen! Amen!" until right near the end. And then she lost me. She can't leave the house for more than an hour without calling to make sure the baby is okay? Oy. That's the guilt talking, sweetie. If you weren't feeling so awful about your ambivalence, you'd be fine about leaving. Just go!

The Song of Names by Norman Lebrecht
I liked this novel. All the music stuff was quite interesting, and Philistine that I am I did learn quite a bit. The "mystery" part didn't do much for me, though.

Sleep Toward Heaven by Amanda Eyre Ward
A lovely novel by a Readerville writer

Old School by Tobias Wolfe
I enjoyed this tremendously, despite the fact that he beat me out for the Northern California Book Prize. I'm kidding. Not about enjoying it. Wolfe is a remarkable writer. His sentences are often quite simply perfect. Simple. And perfect.

Green for Danger by Christianna Brand
I read this old classic to learn about plot construction. The plot was awful. A bunch of people thrown in a room, essentially. And the "story" consisted of musing about who done it. Boring. Very very boring.

The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
This novel about Afghanistan is devastating. It boggles the mind how that country has just turned to dust and blown away. Horrifying. I couldn't put the book down.

The Liberated Bride by A.B. Yehoshua
The problem with reading a novel translated from a language you know is that you keep untranslating it. Anyway, this book is very good. Remarkable insights into contemporary Israeli society. And the most loathsome main character I've come across in a good long while. I hated him.

Shosha by Isaac Bashevis Singer
I know I was supposed to be swept up in this novel. I was not supposed to find it tedious.

Family History by Dani Shapiro
Shapiro is the kind of writer I think I could aspire to be. She writes very well, with strong plots. She'll never win the Pulitzer Prize, but her books are well-constructed and her sentences are fine, sometimes even lovely. So this is my goal.

Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
I love Virginia Woolf so desperately. She's my favorite writer, and I can't quite believe it, since I so loath stream of consciousness, or the very idea of S of c.

The Confessions of Max Tivoli by Andrew Sean Greer
This book is delightful, beautifully written, and John Updike thinks Andy is a better writer than Nabokov and every bit as good as Proust. So there.

Caramelo by Sandra Cisneros
This book was good, but I find the victim thing a little much sometimes.

Colors Insulting to Nature by Cintra Wilson
Man, this book was funny. Vivid seems almost an understatement.

Embalming Mom: Essays in Life by Janet Burroway
This woman is one of the best writers out there and it is a CRIME that she is not better known. Go buy this book. If you can only buy one book, buy hers, not mine.

Apprentice to the Flower Poet Z by Debra Weinstein
This was a fun, light read. Zippy and cute.

Running in the Family by Michael Ondaatje
This writer deserves a Nobel Prize. This book is lovely.

Letters to a Fiction Writer edited by Frederick Busch
Some of these are interesting, especially the ones not meant for the collection. I liked Janet Burroway's and Tobias Wolfe's. Most were pretty tiresome, though.

Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali
You know how much of a sucker I am for novels about this part of the world. So I loved this. It also helped me escape from a loathsome Club Med vacation.

So I'm on this campaign of self-improvement. I'm reading Lectures on Literature by Vladimir Nabokov, and the novels about which he writes. The idea is that since I've never studied literature, and have always been a voracious and passionate, but hardly critical, reader, this will teach me how to "read like a writer." That last sentence is meant to be read in a loud and pompous voice. But I'm also reading plenty of other stuff, otherwise I'd go mad!

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
This is a truly marvelous novel by a young Brit. It's six interlocking tales, kind of spiraling in and out of one another.

Blue Shoe by Anne LaMott
There's a bit in this book where the mother is horrified that her son has only just mentioned a massive homework assignment late the night before it's due. He says something like, "Oh chill out. It's not a big deal. Where do we keep our cheesecloth and dowels?" I laughed at that for a good five minutes.

The Amateur Marriage by Anne Tyler
This novel traces an entire marriage - and entire lifetime. Beautiful. But my god. Depressing as hell.

The Lucky Ones by Rachel Cusk
These short stories are lovely, but I have a bone to pick. This is not a novel. Just because a group of short stories happen to share some characters you cannot just call them a novel. Novels have an overarching plot - a narrative. A theme and a thematic structure. STOP CALLING SHORT STORY COLLECTIONS NOVELS. Goddamn it.

Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
Yes, I'll admit it. I have not read this before, and I only read it because Vlad assigned it. But holy shit. The way he built these characters one layer at a time.

Mansfied Park by Jane Austen
I'm very grateful to Vlad for starting me with something I've read before and loved. I learned a tremendous amount about how to construct a sentence - how to bury irony, for example - from reading this novel under his tutelage. I still loath Fanny Price, though. Little milksop.

The Wife by Meg Wolitzer
This novel is about the wife of a famous writer. Hmm. I wonder why I bought it. It was tremendous fun to read, but I didn't like the ending. I thought the dramatic surprise sold the novel short.

The Fall of Rome by Martha Southgate
A lovely novel about complicated, sad and lonely people.

American Woman by Susan Choi
This book is remarkable. Beautifully written and devastating. I think it might be a Pulitzer finalist... or, dare I say, winner.

Brick Lane by Monica Ali
Terrific novel about a woman from Bangladesh brought to London and married off to a much older man.

The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
This book is fun, although a bit too long for a rather slender premise, but the translation is pretty awful. I slogged through it, though, mostly because we were on a truly horrible vacation - Club Med Ixtapa (what were we thinking???) - and it was the only book I had left.

Your Remind Me by Dan Chaon
Chaon is a terrific writer. Spare and elegant. I loved this book.