Missmeganbunny’s Weblog

I got this book at the library. The sticker on the side, which aids in shelving, I suppose, says “MOO”. I thought that was kind of humorous.

Just like the book. Okay, my writing brain is REALLY not awake right now, but I don’t want to forget what I read. It was about two central characters, Benna and Gerard. It had three mini-stories inside it. They all were about Benna and Gerard, but in different life-scenarios. One had them married, another had them dating, and the last had them as best friends. The latter was my favorite of all three stories.

I don’t understand the significance of the three different-but-the-same stories, but I’m sure there IS major significance there. I just enjoyed the hell out of the book. It was laugh-out-loud funny, literally. Usually when I’m reading something funny, the little voice inside my brain laughs, but I don’t actually physically LAUGH. You know what I mean? But while reading this book, I really did laugh aloud. It was embarrassing. Laying in bed next to my husband, who’s rambling on about something that happened at work, then suddenly I just erupt into laughter. He thinks I’m laughing at what he says… “I know, right?” the whole shebang. So READ THIS BOOK ALONE.

I’m not going to go into the plot, because it had many different plots. This is one of those books that left me feeling changed. I probably won’t remember the story itself in a couple of weeks, but I’ll still feel different than I did before I read the book. It got me thinking in a slightly different groove. Using different word patterns. Envisioning myself single. Yikes!

Anagrams was a great read!

The book I’m reviewing today is called Bird By Bird by Anne Lamott. Anne is an author who has published some books of both fiction and non-fiction, including titles such as Hard Laughter (1980), and Operating Instructions: A Journal Of My Son’s First Year (1993). She’s also written three books about her Christian faith. She’s known, however, to be slightly controversial in the Christian sector. I mean, she uses swear words, for God’s sake. She’s hardly a “conventional Christian”. I think that’s why I like her so much. I don’t see myself getting interested enough in Christianity to pick up one of her three books on faith any time too soon, as I’m sort of on a migration AWAY from it presently. Albeit, she has piqued my interest because of her openness to talk about alcoholism and drug abuse in a very candid, down-to-earth way. No holier-than-thou here.

But I’ve gone entirely off topic, because Bird By Birdis NOT about Christianity or drinking. It’s a book on writing. I picked it up almost simultaneously with my decision to participate in Nanowrimo this year, and honestly I’m not sure which decision came first (reading her book, or deciding to write a novel). They seemed to happen at the same time. And reading this book gave me a full-speed kick in the pants towards getting serious about writing again. It wasn’t about the nitty-gritty, grammatical and phonetic elements of writing. It was more like a book full of inspiration to just write.

In Bird By Bird, Lamott uses a lot of personal anecdotes that really disclose who she is as a person to readers. I think that’s what makes the book so inspiring. She writes a lot about her writing workshops that she teaches, and the silliness of the students involved. She points out the humor in how fastidiously her students subscribe to the idea of being published as a simple, fill-out-the-paperwork or get-good-connections endeavor. She puts heavy emphasis on writing for your OWN personal fulfillment, and she suggests that publishing be made a secondary (or even lesser) goal. I think this is great advice for writers. I am not published, and have never produced anything worth publishing. I don’t ever assume I’ll be published. But if I write a book… I will be so proud of myself, and that’s all that matters. The book Bird By Bird affirmed that attitude for me tenfold.

This book will give you great advice about how to get started in writing. Lamott basically says just GO. Do it badly, just DO it, and go back later to make it good. She came up with the term “shitty first drafts”, which are mentioned tons of times in this book. She believes that it is crucial to write shitty first drafts as a beginning to any writing assignment or project. It may indeed be shitty, but it’s the diamond extracted from the earth. With some polishing, it will be beautiful. I think that many people attempt to write things once and expect them to be good enough for publishing… or even good enough to meet their own expectations. And the writings aren’t good enough. And then people give up.

I’d recommend Bird By Bird to anyone who wants to get serious about writing, but needs some inspiration to get moving. Or to anyone who’s made lots of attempts to write something, but they always seem to fail. This isn’t a guide to getting published, or a handbook to writing grammatically correct material. It’s a book about the writer’s PROCESS. And that’ s one of the most important things you should read about, as a writer.

Lamott tells us not to ever think of what we write the first time we sit down and work on something as the product. This is advice I will cherish forever.

 My rating: ***** 1/2!
I just finished reading Fall On Your Knees by Ann-Marie MacDonald. This fictional story was about 500 pages long, and I swear, something important happened on each and every page. I’m not even going to get into the story itself… I’d have to take hours to give an in-depth story summary as I have with some of the other books I’ve reviewed here. Plus, it had a huge element of suspense that I wouldn’t want to ruin for any potential readers.

I’ll tell you this much: it seemed to deal with just about every conceivable topic of social deviancy and controversy. We’re talking incest, pedophilia, rape, prostitution, violence, crime, religion, superstition… and by “controversies” I mean interracial relationships and same sex relationships. Which, might I add, are two of my favorite topics to read about. The best part of all was that it took place in a historical setting. Cape Breton, Nova Scotia in the early part of the 1900s. That’s not a place and time you read about every day. The prose was beautiful. Haunting, even.

I love it when the characters I’m getting to know in a story automatically assign themselves to faces of people I know. When I get such a strong sense of the character’s personality, that I start to subconsciously form a picture of a familiar person in my life with similar personality traits. That happened immediately with this book. All of the characters were so painfully realistic, my brain selected faces without even consulting me. I can boldly and certainly say that MacDonald has crafted the most believable and deep characters I have EVER met in a story, in any book, any time.

The plot was heart-quickening. Sadly, I decided to read this book while on vacation at the beach, and I’ll have to admit that I don’t remember much about the vacation itself. The plot of this story was loud enough to block out crashing waves, my husband’s voice and even my own thoughts. That says a lot. If you are a fan of unexpected twists… mind-fuckery as I like to call it, you will be feasting royally on this one.

The setting and descriptions thereof caused me to acquire goosebumps, many times. I could picture it all so vividly, I could smell the Lebanese food cooking and hear Kathleen’s voice lessons. It made me feel more present in MacDonald’s world of Cape Breton and the Piper family than I’ve felt in my own family in a long time.

Lastly, the “sexual surprise” near the end left me reeling, shocked and strangely entranced.

This book will shock you. That’s my thesis statement… my summarizing sentence. Whatever. It was beautiful, haunting, and enthralling. Read it. The End.