Friday Reads for Spring Break
Plus, an opportunity for subscribers to share topics they want covered this spring and summer
Hello from the friendly skies!
It still amazes me that a massive iron bird filled with luggage and gummy trays of ravioli can fly through the air at 30,000 feet, so the fact that I can write a newsletter up here boggles my dang mind.
I’m on my way home after a terrific spring vacation. We returned to France to spend time with friends and family (I lived in Paris in my twenties and my husband is French) and then we went to Méribel in the French Alps for our first-ever family ski vacation. We had sunshine every morning and aside from one big tumble (mine), a marvelous time was had by all.
Speaking of time, if you don’t have a lot today—scroll to the end of this post where I’m inviting subscribers to chime in on content they’d like posts about this spring and summer.
If you do have time, however, I’d love to tell you about my vacation reads.
What I read and what I’m reading: my spring breaker books
Are you all fans of “Libby”? Libby is an app that works with your local library to bring e-books free of charge to your tablet or e-reader. I loaded up the following titles before leaving for France:
“The Yellow House” (memoir) by Sarah M. Broom
“A Haunting on the Hill” (psychological thriller) by Elizabeth Hand
“This Motherless Land” (novel) by Nikki May1
I started with “A Haunting on the Hill” because it’s fun to read a thriller on vacation. Shirley Jackson’s estate authorized Hand to return to the world of Jackson’s “The Haunting of Hill House” for this book, and perhaps my experience with Hand’s version would have been more enjoyable if I’d read the original (I haven’t).2 If you’ve taken my writing classes, you’ll know I’m obsessed with nailing socioeconomic details in fiction, so right off the bat, when our main character (a playwright) uses a ten-thousand dollar grant to stretch reeeeeeeal far, my incredulity was triggered. Using some of the grant (not all of it!) our playwright 1) pays a major actress to be the lead in her new play and rehearse with her and the other cast members for two straight weeks in 2) a sprawling victorian home in Hillsdale, NY the playwright has rented as a “submersive rehearsal space” while also using the grant to 3) pay a private chef to cook for the entire group and 4) a private cleaner to tidy up after the group and help out with their meals. Hillsdale is in Columbia County! This is post-pandemic! I don’t care how many demons live in it, a seven-bedroom, five-story house is gonna take a major chunk out of that grant and that’s way before our playwright pays the IRS for grant money received!
Apologies to the many people who loved this book—I can’t count myself among them. I found the premise contrived and couldn’t suspend my disbelief to make the novel work. (Mild spoiler alerts ahead.) I realize that I recently spent a week with a phantom so I’m not well-placed to judge, but if I see a massive black hare with demonic eyes walking around on two legs in my rented kitchen, I’m asking for my money back, pronto. While I don’t enjoy rabbits in my fiction (“Watership Down” scared the crap out of me when I read it in school), I do have a soft spot for books about houses with appetites. If you do too, I highly suggest Mariana Enriquez’ “Our Share of Night” and/or “Mexican Gothic” by Silvia Moreno-Garcia in this novel’s place.
Because I didn’t love the book I started out with, I chased it with a novel I adore and re-read pretty often: Sheena Patel’s 2023 novel “I’m a Fan.” This story about a young British woman involved in a flailing affair and an obsession with an influencer is one of my favorite books of the past decade. It’s about class, sex, race, and the bad ways the Internet makes us feel. If you enjoyed Ruth Madievsky’s “All Night Pharmacy,” “Women” by
or “Alice Sadie Celine” by Sarah Blakely-Cartwright, you will LOVE “I’m a Fan.”“This Motherless Land” was a revelation—I wasn’t familiar with Nikki May’s fiction but I’m a fan girl now. This novel (which is chewy, well-plotted and emotional, with visceral characters you’ll both root for and detest) is about the reunion between two distant cousins; one a determined and focused young woman in Nigeria, the other a bumbling mess who’s trying to “adult” in London. I liked this novel so much, I promptly bought May’s debut title, “Wahala” which I’ll be reading once I press ‘publish’ on this post.
I haven’t gotten to “The Yellow House” yet, but I have a nine-hour flight to Atlanta followed by a four-hour layover followed by another three-hour flight to the east coast, so I have time to break open this 2019 National Book Award winner, still.
These are the books I’m looking forward to next:
My gal pal
’s erotic and hilarious “Animal Instinct” just came out this week! 2025 is off to a hell of a start. If you have a friend—a woman friend, in particular—who really needs to get out of their own head and disassociate from everything happening in their domestic life, this is the book for them.I’m also looking forward to the new Fernando Flores’ “Brother Brontë” which is, to put it lightly, an extremely timely read: “The year is 2038, and the formerly bustling town of Three Rivers, Texas, is a surreal wasteland. Under the authoritarian thumb of its tech industrialist mayor, Pablo Henry Crick, the town has outlawed reading and forced most of the town’s mothers to work as indentured laborers at the Big Tex Fish Cannery, which poisons the atmosphere and lines Crick’s pockets.” (This description is from the back jacket of the book.) Fernando is one of the most unique and interesting wordsmiths I know, so I can’t wait for this one.
There’s a new
floating in the atmosphere, and it’s called “Hot Air”! And a new Patricia Lockwood! (Thank you for the head’s up on that one, , as I too had no idea there was a new Lockwood in the works.) Speaking of Leigh, I’m looking forward to her satirical novel about a hype house that goes gothic: “If you’re seeing this, it’s meant for you.” My girl has a hot new novel just around the bend, and there’s a shiny Catriona Ward coming out this fall. I’m going to have my hands full of excellent reading, and I can not wait.
Are you also looking forward to these titles? Are you a super lucky person who has already read them? Tell us in the comments!
March + April events!
Who will I see at AWP in Los Angeles next week? I’m on two panels there; one on Thursday, one on Friday. Info below.
April 3rd I’ll be in conversation with the wondrous
about her stunning book “Mothers and Other Fictional Characters: A Memoir in Essays” at The House of Books in Kent, CT, at 6pm EST.April 5th at 1:30pm EST I’ll be discussing how horses can help us be better humans, followed by a book signing at the nonprofit equine therapy center, Shepard Meadows. This event is free, but you do need to register which you can do here.
April 7th I’ll be in NYC for the Author’s Guild Annual Gala- I’m a proud member of their Advisory Council, and in an era of banned books and speech suppression, all money raised for this event goes to a great cause.
And finally, April 26th I’ll be celebrating Independent Bookstore Day at “The Curious Cat Bookstore” in Winsted, CT with two other authors (final details to come).
Then I’ll have my nose down in developmental edits for a while!
Five more weeks to apply to Turning Points for our October 2025 workshop!
Applications for our 2025 writing workshop on a private ranch in New Mexico close May 1st. While this is a selective program (meaning that we curate the participants; it’s not a “first come, first served” application process) this is a workshop designed for creative thinkers at all stages of the writing life. Story’s only in your head? No problem. Book was already published and you don’t know where to go next? Not a problem, either! We are open to writers of all genders and writing of all genres except poetry (I apologize—I can’t advise on poetry as I write it very poorly.). All information about the workshop and application materials are located here.
Thanks to generous alumni, we have two partial scholarships available this year. The week-long retreat takes place at the stunning Monte Prieto ranch in south central New Mexico.
And finally….an invitation to offer input on future posts!
While I have content planned for weeks to come, we’re heading into a busy time of year where lots of you will be gearing up for summer workshops, maybe some residencies, fine-tuning revisions and perfecting query letters. Accordingly, I’d love to hear what you’d like to see a post/posts on in the coming months.
What elements of publishing and writing feel particularly opaque or frustrating?
What is something that you just don’t understand, or maybe even hate about this industry?
What is something that you just don’t understand, or maybe even hate about your current project?
I’m opening this particular comment section to all subscribers—an exception to my other posts. Please stay on topic in the comment section—we’re here to discuss books we’ve read or are looking forward to reading, or to specify content you’d like future posts on. If you are unpleasant to me or to anyone else in our community in the comment section, I will delete your comment and unsubscribe you from our network of writers.
Please remember to put your comments in the comment section *underneath this post.* Not in a direct message to me, not via email, not through other platforms.
While I won’t be responding to individual comments below, trust that I’ll be keeping track of who wants to hear what in the months ahead.
Thank for being here, and good luck with your writing. Safe travels to all those heading to AWP next week!
Courtney
I use affiliate links throughout this post to Bookshop.org where I utilize the modest earnings to purchase books, myself. I never use affiliate links for my own titles.
I have no good excuse as to why I haven’t read “The Haunting of Hill House” yet! Forgive me!
As a Taurus, I am always adding $$ up in fiction! For future post, and I think it may have been touched on, but what are real strategies people are using to keep to their work in the midst of what is either a constitutional crisis, a burgeoning dystopia, or just another Wednesday?
Since your book "B&A the Book Deal" came out, many digital platforms have emerged to offer services pre and post publishing to writer/authors. For example, NetGalley, Reedsy, BookBub, BookFunnel, Goodreads, StoryGraph, Novelry, Story Studio. Your insights would be helpful in sorting these opportunities. Thanks.