The Five Most Influential Books When I was a Young Reader (that would work for today’s teens, too)

Guest Post
by
Mary Hastings Fox

Do today’s teenagers still read books, or has social media replaced print completely? Studies show that, by college, most are reading because they must. When they do read for pleasure, they are more likely to prefer books where kids must fend for themselves or die (The Lord of the Rings or The Hunger Games.) I thought it might be fun to think back to my favorite young adult books to see how things have changed.

1. Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase by Carolyn Keene ( Mildred A. Wirt)

A first favorite was Nancy Drew, and I stuck with her all through high school. Mildred Wirt, ghostwriter “Carolyn Keene” for 23 of the first 30 Nancy Drew books, was an independent, resourceful woman herself. She endowed Nancy and many of her other heroines with these same qualities. The message was that any girl could be anything, and this is part of what made her so beloved with young readers. But there was more. The relationship of distant fathers and their determined daughters can always fulfill a young girl’s fantasy about who she will be as a woman. While Nancy is loaded with brains and wit, she is often isolated in a dangerous world, and it’s often not clear that any help will come in time, if ever. In my mind, this is the reason why Nancy Drew is still wildly popular after 75 years – she knows that her choices can be wrong and that she doesn’t know everything she needs to. She is essentially on her own and still, she persists!

2. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

The book’s protagonist, Scout Finch, is a precocious, pre-teen tomboy, trying to understand the nature of bigotry in the 1930’s South. Her father Atticus is an impossibly good and wise man wise who holds her hand as layers of people’s manners and charm fall away to expose the moral core of bigotry and violence underneath. There are many of the title’s “mockingbird” characters in this novel–gentle, innocent victims of bigotry and the evil nature of mankind. The real mockingbird is the myth of human goodness. The town is forced to see each other’s racism and stubborn beliefs about class and race.

This book is, ideally, read at a time of the reader’s own coming-of-age. It’s also a time in life when kids are beginning to understand the greater worlds of literature. Atticus is the anchor to integrity and morality that centers his children during violent storms that threaten everything they know. In short, he’s the perfect father.

The message of love and tolerance amidst social pressure is important, but the main hooks for the teen reader are the drama of the story, the author’s fluid prose, and her exquisite characters.

3. Nero Wolfe by Rex Stout

…was rarely read by the girls of my generation. The heroes are two men: Archie Goodwin–earthy, gutsy, gritty, and very masculine–the wise-cracking gumshoe detective and the foil of his boss, Nero Wolfe. Wolfe is an overweight, orchid-loving intellectual and a gourmand. He is also a recluse who hates to work, and who, book in hand, prefers never to move from his chair except for dinner. Most women in the series are merely decorative, as Wolfe, among his other shortcomings, is a misogynist who barely tolerates Archie’s womanizing. So why would a girl read this stuff? Why to fix them, of course. I was alternately Archie and Wolfe in the stories and, being far less lop-sided than they were, I was better than either of them at solving the murders, at understanding everyone’s motives, and at making my life work. What girl could resist?

4. Murder on The Orient Express by Agatha Christie

Agatha’s most famous protagonist was Hercule Poirot, and he was my favorite. He constantly referred to his approach to solving mysteries as using his brain’s “little gray cells.” Christie was no slouch in this department. She was an exceptionally smart and gifted writer, deftly combining sharp structure with a psychological spin. Her novels streamed along with unique but believable dialogue, flawless mood-setting, and carefully constructed murder plots that to this day serve as blueprints for modern detective writers. She left a library of work that’s both intelligent and timeless. I can pick up one that I read decades ago, and it feels fresh and timeless. Murder and good writing—a combination that made the “Queen of Crime” one of the best writers in history–and on top of that, she managed it while staying G-rated. I’ve still never met a teenager who didn’t say they loved the book when closing the last page on Poirot.

5. Grendel by John Gardner

This is one of my favorite coming-of-age novels, and, in my opinion, a masterpiece that should be read by anyone who enjoys reading fiction. The way Gardner takes a character that you thought you knew and adds layers upon layers of depth to it is absolutely astounding. This is a fantasy book but it’s not light reading for a teen-ager.

Grendel’s internal conflicts drive the story in one of the best character analyses I’ve ever read. Grendel is not really a story about a monster, it’s the story of an isolated person trying to make sense of the world as a hated and tortured adolescent. While the hero (Beowulf) still wins in the end, Grendel, the monster, is the protagonist, and it’s his last thoughts that stay with us. “Grendel is dying and so may you all,” he says, which is, after all, is consistent with the nature of a dragon. (Sound like any teen-agers you know?) At seventeen, I went off to college with a new understanding of the complexity and foreknowledge of what it might be like to be a human.

About Mary . . .

Mary Hastings Fox studied literature and poetry before becoming a psychologist. She is an associate professor of psychology and education at the University of Maryland and has had her own psychology practice for 30 years. In addition to writing other people’s true stories, she published a textbook and numerous journal articles on organizational psychology. Most of her writing is now is deeply rooted in nature. The Last Skipjack is her first novel, with a sequel in progress.

And a Note from Rhonda

You’ll find that the hyperlinks above lead you to online shopping at this essay’s featured independent bookstore, Scuppernong Books in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Scuppernong is as warm and welcoming as any bookstore you’ll find. It also features a community bar with hot coffee, cool wine, and craft beer. Check their website regularly for featured author readings (including mine!) and other events! #shopindie

March 7, 2020 0

Summer 2019 Reading List — Four Books You #MustRead

Whether you spend your summer days reading on the beach, in a shaded hammock in the mountains, or curled up in your own climate-controlled living room, you won’t want to miss grabbing one–or all!–of these Summer 2019 #MustReads! There’s something in the list below for everyone!

NOVEL –
Valerie Nieman’s To the Bones is a murder mystery, slash romance, slash ecocritical novel, slash ghost story, and it deftly blurs the lines between these seemingly unrelated genres with page-turning skill. Y’all, this novel kept me up late, and the ending caught me so off-guard I know you’ll never see it coming. With equal parts Celtic mythology and Appalachian folklore, the twists and turns will have you laughing, gasping, and second-guessing what you think you know until the very last page.

SHORT-STORY COLLECTION –
The Sound of Holding Your Breath is Natalie Sypolt’s debut collection, and wow! What a way to start a writing career! These stories are set in modern-day Appalachia, but no matter where you’re from, you’ll relate to each of the fourteen stories herein, because these characters deal with emotions you’ve felt or feel, they’ve faced challenges you’ve faced or are facing–or shoot!–one might even be you! These stories will test your courage and your mettle, and you may find yourself at the end of this stunning work asking yourself if you would have behaved in the same way these characters did, if you would have responded in the same manner in which they did, should you be faced with what they are facing.

MEMOIR –
Dawn Davies writes “A Memoir in Pieces,” Mothers of Sparta, and even if you think you’re not a fan of memoir, prepare yourself to be struck to the core by the gorgeous rawness of these stories. It’s rare for me to cry over a book, but this one turned me inside out. I giggled, I shook my head, and I truly wept over the course of these sixteen stories, each even more powerful because I know it is true, I know Davies bared her weakest, strongest, and most honest self to us in these pages. We see Davies navigate her nomadic childhood, marriage and divorce, pregnancy and postpartum depression, and the beautiful heartbreak of motherhood. With blade-sharp prose, Davies bisects and dissects her life for us, and in doing so, she lays bare a path that leads straight to the heart.

FORTHCOMING NOVEL –
Though you won’t be able to order Jon Sealy’s latest, The Edge of America, until September 11th, you’ll want to go ahead and pre-order today and keep it at the top of your to-be-read list. This action-packed political thriller is set in steamy 1980’s Miami, Florida, and man, is it hot! The CIA is keeping their eye on employee Bobby West, who when in need of easy money succumbs to a money-laundering deal with the devil himself–if the devil is named Alexander French. West’s obstinate teenage daughter skips town with French’s millions and a small-town Southern boy who is merely looking for his own shortcut to riches, neither realizing an Israeli hit woman has been hired by Cuban exiles to find French’s money and exterminate them both. You’ll hold your breath on this one through to the very last page.
NOTE: Be sure to look for my detailed review of Sealy’s novel forthcoming in South 85 Journal later this year!)

June 23, 2019 0

How to Feast on Your Summer Reading List

Today is the day serious book nerds like you and I look forward to for days, weeks, even months: it’s the day summer reading begins! You probably have a tall stack (or, if you’re like me, stacks) of books that you’ve anticipated reading for far too long. Some of these books may be mindless entertainment; stories you won’t take too seriously, and ones you’ll probably forget a few weeks from now. Some may be literary fiction; stories that will cause introspection, play with your emotions, leave you forever remembering characters who touched you. Some may be nonfiction; memoir, how-to, or self-help texts that will teach you something new. If you’re lucky, one will be a poetry collection; poems to inspire your day, lift your spirit, and encourage new ways of seeing the unique in everyday moments.

The best way to devour your summer reading list is to relax, and get started. Begin your day with a cup of coffee and a couple of great poems. Once you’ve been sufficiently inspired, crack open a non-fiction text and learn something new about a topic that interests you. In the afternoon, visit the beach with umbrella drink in hand, or grab an iced tea and sit outside on your porch, and lose track of time with a riveting novel that will transport you to a different world. Then, for a bedtime snack, pull out a collection of short stories or a fine literary magazine. Short stories couch brief flashes of light, of insight, of understanding; they’re perfect morsels of fiction that can nourish dreams and visions during your sleeping hours.

Now, what should you read? Feast your eyes upon whatever stories interest you! There’s a smorgasbord of summer reading lists online, and most any supermarket-checkout magazine will include someone’s recommended list of summer must-reads. If you don’t already have a stack you’ve been waiting to devour, check out the reviews at NewPages.com, or search Goodreads.com for suggestions. Or, check out the titles (some new, some a few years older) on my personal summer reading list, below:

American Sycamore by Kathleen Nalley – Poetry collection – I’ve had the privilege of not only reading Kathleen’s poetry before, but of hearing her read it aloud at the Converse Low-Residency MFA Program in Spartanburg, SC. Kathleen’s writing is sharp, precise, and easy to understand, yet it never fails to leave me breathless with newfound revelations.

Pasture Art by Marlin Barton – Short-story collection – Another collection of work by a friend whose Southern voice I hear in my head every time I read his stunning stories. This collection, set in Alabama, has been in my “save for dessert” stack. Why? Because I know from reading Barton’s prior work that this collection will indeed be a treat to be savored, full of stories I won’t want to rush through (even though they are brief), stories I’ll want to ponder and re-read, letting them melt into me, like ice cream on the tongue.

Wired for Story by Lisa Cron – Writing craft text – Every good writer must regularly read more about the craft of writing, but this text is touted as more than another how-to-write-well manual: it’s a blueprint of how the brain understands and processes stories, offering “cognitive secrets” and neuroscientific breakthroughs on how we respond to the stories we read (and write). Yes, this one should be worth biting into!

Live by Night by Dennis Lehane – Crime fiction– I’ve always loved to wolf down a riveting thriller, and when I first discovered Lehane’s work through his Gone, Baby, Gone series starring detectives Kenzie and Gennaro, I was hooked on his writing, as it’s the perfect blend of entertaining genre and literary fiction. Live by Night is the story of the rise and fall of a Prohibition-Era gangster, soon to be made into a major motion picture directed by Ben Affleck.

We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates – Literary fiction – Yes, this “Oprah’s Book Club” bestselling novel was published in 1997, but it’s never too late to catch up on classic fiction that you missed the first time around. This family saga of heartbreak, healing, and hope has been recommended to me at least a dozen times, and this summer is the perfect time for me to sink my teeth into it.

Lost Mountain by Erik Reece – Environmental non-fiction – Another text that’s a few years old (2006), but one that I’m anxious to read. Reviews of this work collectively state that it’s more than a nature book, more than ecocriticism, more than a documentary; it’s evocative writing in truthful terms about a subject that is often buried, and when it is unearthed is sometimes pushed aside as mere righteous indignation. The unpalatable, radical destruction of Appalachia through mountaintop-removal mining is something every American needs to know more about, and this is the text I’ll be reading to further my education on this devastating reality.

Bellevue Literary Review, Vol. 15, No. 1 – Literary magazine – If you aren’t regularly reading literary magazines, you are really missing out. Not only is it the best way to be the first among your friends to discover great new writers, it’s the best way to support those new writers as they’re starting out. In addition, you’ll find smashingly good work by your personal favorites. Bellevue Literary Review, with its focus on short fiction, poetry, and nonfiction stories about medicine, nursing, philosophy, ethics, psychology, and sociology, has long been one of my favorite literary journals. These little literary bites are perfect for mental noshing while waiting for an appointment, lounging by the pool, or just before bedtime. I’m looking forward to whetting my story appetite on this quarter’s issue.

Now you know what I’ll be reading this summer. What are some of the titles on your summer reading list? Share them in the comments section below, and let’s exchange recommendations and reviews!

May 28, 2015 0

Writers Reading

It’s a question writers often ask their friends: what are you reading? Often the answer will be a novel from the bestseller list; less often, classic literature or a short story collection; even less often (sadly), a book of poetry. When writers ask other writers the same question, common responses might be reversed, and answers likely include books on the craft of writing.

Writers aren’t snobs to bestselling genre fiction—some of us love nothing more than a lighthearted beach read or eerie horror story now and again. After all, it’s a writer who wrote that bestseller. Still, the books and novels you’ll find on an author’s bookshelf may differ from those on Great Aunt Martha’s shelf, or your cousin’s shelf, or even your best friend’s shelf.

Why is that?

Mostly it’s because, as writers, we understand the importance of reading the best stories, and by best, we don’t necessarily mean bestseller. We mean stories with characters we can’t forget, with plots that we’ll be thinking about a year from now, and with a narrative voice that rings in our ears forever. Writers also understand how crucial it is to study in perpetuity the craft of writing. We are students until the end of our days. While we’re always looking for the next, greatest writing book, we still return to ones we’ve read before, knowing we’ll learn something new—something we missed the first (or second) time around, when our writing skill was at a different level.

A large shelf in my office is filled with books on writing craft, and there are still more stacks of texts about writing in other areas of my home. Rarely does a week go by that I don’t read a chapter—or several—from one of these sources of inspiration, style, and skill.

Below are titles of a few texts I’ve found extremely helpful as a fiction writer and to which I often return. I hope you’ll share in the comments some of the books on craft that have helped you grow as a writer. Because, as you well relate, I’m always looking for the next great book on writing.

The Lie that Tells a Truth by John Dufresne

The Art and Craft of the Short Story by Rick DeMarinis

Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose

Burning Down the House by Charles Baxter

From Where You Dream by Robert Olin Butler

Making Shapely Fiction by Jerome Stern

On Writing by Stephen King

On Writing by Eudora Welty

Writing Fiction by Gotham Writer’s Workshop Faculty

Building Fiction by Jesse Lee Kercheval

Writing Fiction: A Guide to Narrative Craft by Janet Burroway

Now share your favorites below!

January 22, 2015 8

Throwback Thursday

You may be thinking that it’s difficult to throw back on a brand new blog site, but there are ways to pass or rush around just about any obstacle. I’m going to tackle it today (another football metaphor—did you catch it?) by posting a list of throwback novels or story collections that had a direct and positive impact on my writing. I call them throwbacks, not only because I read them some time ago, but because each was published over ten years ago. I’m leaving out the classics—it goes without saying that most any writer or reader has been shaped in some way by Hawthorne, Austen, Poe, and Hemingway—focusing instead on works by contemporary authors, a few of whom you may not have read.

Some of these novels influenced my use of language or dialect, some taught me how to develop characters or add tension, some inspired me to prioritize study of the craft, while still others simply left me breathlessly wondering how on earth did they do that? All of these fulfilled the ultimate goal of any work of fiction; they entertained me.

If you’re a writer or an avid reader who loves a great story, I hope you’ll crack the spines of a few of these fabulous fictions. And while you’re browsing the list below, perhaps you’ll recall titles of a few works of fiction that inspired or influenced you in some way, as well. If so, please share them the comment section below, so we can add them to our “to read” lists in 2015.

Here’s to a great novel and a cup of hot tea to warm your spirit on this cold winter’s day!

Storming Heaven: A Novel, by Denise Giardina – I credit this novel (and author) for helping me realize it’s okay to tell my own story, my “Where I’m From”, in a voice and dialect that sound natural and authentic to my upbringing. (It’s okay to write y’all, y’all.)

Open Secrets: Stories, by Alice Munro – These intriguing, multi-layered stories hide as much as they reveal, and I love reading them again and again, each time uncovering some new truth, gaining a new perspective on the world in which I live and write.

A Drink Before the War, by Dennis LeHane – This first in a series of six private-eye novels taught me that genre fiction and literary fiction don’t have to be separate entities, as there’s some damn fine writing here. It’s the first time I’ve ever read straight through an entire series of novels, one after the other, in less than a week. Captivating and harrowing!

Burning Bright, by Ron Rash – It’s no secret among my bookish friends that I’m a huge fan of Ron Rash’s writing. It’s—wow—it’s just, WOW! (Okay, okay, I’m breathing normally again.) Though I’d read everything Rash had written up to that point, when I read this collection of amazing stories, something clicked in my head, and I began writing at a deeper, more intuitive level. I can honestly say that my MFA creative thesis would not have been the same without the heady influence of these stories.

Waiting, by Ha Jin – I’ll never again try on a pair of too-tight shoes without remembering the compelling characters in this story. With amazing narrative structure, the right touch of humor, fascinating cultural details, and poignant allegories, this is one love story you’ll never forget.

The Complete Stories, by Flannery O’Connor – Yes, yes, I know I said that I wasn’t talking about the classics, but O’Connor’s collection transcends description like classic and canonical—though it’s certainly that! Her stories are as relevant today as they were when she penned them half a century ago. I turn to them often, particularly when I need inspiration to write, when I’m struggling to make every word purposeful, or when I simply want to enjoy an entertaining read.

This list could potential go on for several more pages, as every novel I read perhaps holds some sort of lesson for me as a writer. These I’ve mentioned, however, are a few that gave me courage and confidence and motivation to pick up a pen and write.

Now it’s your turn. What works of fiction have influenced you?

January 8, 2015 4

Tag: book recommendations

The Five Most Influential Books When I was a Young Reader (that would work for today’s teens, too)

Guest Post
by
Mary Hastings Fox

About Mary . . .

And a Note from Rhonda

Summer 2019 Reading List — Four Books You #MustRead

How to Feast on Your Summer Reading List

Writers Reading

Throwback Thursday

Blogs I Follow

Follow Blog via Email

Guest Post by Mary Hastings Fox

About Mary . . .

And a Note from Rhonda

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Guest Post
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Mary Hastings Fox