Mark Beyer's Blog: Mark Beyer Reads and Writes - Posts Tagged "readers"
The Quick and Pithy of MY READING MIND...
Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson
It's odd how nearly every character in this novel has the ability to quote literature -- especially Shakespeare. Of my various Brit friends I don't know any who could quote poetry, drama, or tid-bits of novels; no, not a single one, although they do know lines of dialogue from East Enders and Monty Python.
Nevertheless, these novel characters, particularly Ursula, live lives of luxury. No sign of Dickens here! Well, without such "trappings" -- is money really a trap? -- she could not have used her reincarnation to get close to Hitler.
I'm not giving anything away: the first two pages tell you about all anyone needs to know, as foreshadowing, to keep the reader-pump primed for all the events as re-combinate, hashed, diverted, inverted, and etcetera.
A fun book.
-- Mark Beyer
author of What Beauty and Max, the blind guy, and The Janitor: Or, Dostoevsky in America.
To sample and buy: https://rb.gy/poyrsd
#Readers #GoodRead #bookworm #booklover #kateatkison #death #reincarnation #bookshop #bookclubs #schoolshootings
It's odd how nearly every character in this novel has the ability to quote literature -- especially Shakespeare. Of my various Brit friends I don't know any who could quote poetry, drama, or tid-bits of novels; no, not a single one, although they do know lines of dialogue from East Enders and Monty Python.
Nevertheless, these novel characters, particularly Ursula, live lives of luxury. No sign of Dickens here! Well, without such "trappings" -- is money really a trap? -- she could not have used her reincarnation to get close to Hitler.
I'm not giving anything away: the first two pages tell you about all anyone needs to know, as foreshadowing, to keep the reader-pump primed for all the events as re-combinate, hashed, diverted, inverted, and etcetera.
A fun book.
-- Mark Beyer
author of What Beauty and Max, the blind guy, and The Janitor: Or, Dostoevsky in America.
To sample and buy: https://rb.gy/poyrsd
#Readers #GoodRead #bookworm #booklover #kateatkison #death #reincarnation #bookshop #bookclubs #schoolshootings
The Quick and Pithy of MY READING MIND…
Saturday, by Ian McEwan
If you’d ever thought to “record” an entire day, there would be a surprise over how much you thought about, observed, considered and accepted/rejected, spoke to people (and how, and of which topics), day-dreamed, detailed every incident you saw (or thought you saw), with whom you had contact and/or encountered … well, the list could continue. Never would it be exhausted, because something would have been missed.
This is SATURDAY, McEwan’s tip-of-the-hat to one particularly observant (though hardly decisive) Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon who awakes at 4:30am on his day off. And quite a day this is to become:
The run-up to the US invasion of Iraq makes its appearance.
His son, a blues guitarist; his daughter, a newly published poet.
His wife, a corporate lawyer.
His mother, not all there anymore.
His father-in-law, there’and’then’some.
And then something actually happens. That’s when this carnival ride rolls over the edge, and away you go.
-- Mark Beyer
author of What Beauty and Max, the blind guy, and The Janitor: Or, Dostoevsky in America. To sample and buy: https://rb.gy/poyrsd
#ReadersWanted #GoodRead #bookworm #booklover #ianmcewan #Saturday #bookclubs #library #booktofilm
If you’d ever thought to “record” an entire day, there would be a surprise over how much you thought about, observed, considered and accepted/rejected, spoke to people (and how, and of which topics), day-dreamed, detailed every incident you saw (or thought you saw), with whom you had contact and/or encountered … well, the list could continue. Never would it be exhausted, because something would have been missed.
This is SATURDAY, McEwan’s tip-of-the-hat to one particularly observant (though hardly decisive) Henry Perowne, a neurosurgeon who awakes at 4:30am on his day off. And quite a day this is to become:
The run-up to the US invasion of Iraq makes its appearance.
His son, a blues guitarist; his daughter, a newly published poet.
His wife, a corporate lawyer.
His mother, not all there anymore.
His father-in-law, there’and’then’some.
And then something actually happens. That’s when this carnival ride rolls over the edge, and away you go.
-- Mark Beyer
author of What Beauty and Max, the blind guy, and The Janitor: Or, Dostoevsky in America. To sample and buy: https://rb.gy/poyrsd
#ReadersWanted #GoodRead #bookworm #booklover #ianmcewan #Saturday #bookclubs #library #booktofilm
The Fortress of Solitude by J. Lethem
The Quick and Pithy of MY READING MIND…
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
This story is not about “the losers” – although plenty of them have secondary parts, and lots of walk-ons. We know those types. They fade into the background. Likely as well to bitch about how they’d never been given a chance. Losers.
Dylan Ebdus understands life differently. While having had to negotiate the micro-society of his childhood street (and, later, neighborhood) with rather poor results, he’s tattooed with the knowledge that one needs to learn something in order to make a life.
A Brooklyn landscape; a single street in Boerum Hill. That is: long before “fashionable neighborhood” was attached to this slice of low-rise cityscape. The set-up of black-white-brown friendship and its opposite. The aura of the place is enough to keep it full for any reader.
-- Mark Beyer
author of “Max, the blind guy” and three other novels
Read samples on Amazon: https://rb.gy/poyrsd
Google Books: http://rb.gy/r89nk7
Kobo Books: http://rb.gy/cecwhw
Apple Books: http://rb.gy/6t87tl
#Readers #GoodRead #bookworm #goodbooks #booklover #novels #Lethem #FortressOfSolitude
#libraries #literature #googlebooks #kobobooks #applebooks #kindle
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
This story is not about “the losers” – although plenty of them have secondary parts, and lots of walk-ons. We know those types. They fade into the background. Likely as well to bitch about how they’d never been given a chance. Losers.
Dylan Ebdus understands life differently. While having had to negotiate the micro-society of his childhood street (and, later, neighborhood) with rather poor results, he’s tattooed with the knowledge that one needs to learn something in order to make a life.
A Brooklyn landscape; a single street in Boerum Hill. That is: long before “fashionable neighborhood” was attached to this slice of low-rise cityscape. The set-up of black-white-brown friendship and its opposite. The aura of the place is enough to keep it full for any reader.
-- Mark Beyer
author of “Max, the blind guy” and three other novels
Read samples on Amazon: https://rb.gy/poyrsd
Google Books: http://rb.gy/r89nk7
Kobo Books: http://rb.gy/cecwhw
Apple Books: http://rb.gy/6t87tl
#Readers #GoodRead #bookworm #goodbooks #booklover #novels #Lethem #FortressOfSolitude
#libraries #literature #googlebooks #kobobooks #applebooks #kindle
Quest! ... characters
QUEST! is coming out at the end of this month. It's a novel with 12 main characters. I had a way to keep them separate as I began to develop the story, which was to sketch thumbnails of how I saw them according to who they were and what they represented. This is the year 1911 ... and here they are:
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Mark Beyer Reads and Writes
Here I'll give my opinions and recommendations (or not) of books I've recently read. I also write about writing novels and that craft. Enjoy!
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