Writers are always trying to improve their storytelling skills, and one of the best ways to do this is to read good books. Books are the gifts that keep on giving as they provide a means for us writers to learn from each other. And what a pleasurable learning experience it is!
We all have different reading lists and different favorites among the books we’ve read, and yours may differ widely from mine, but I thought I’d share with you some of the books that have made a lasting impression on me and what I think they offer that can help other writers in their literary endeavors.
PLOT: For tightness and integration of plot, I recommend The Man from St. Petersburg, by Ken Follett, and Fletch, by Gregory Mcdonald. Fletch is especially interesting in that it interweaves two or three plotlines into one very tight one.
SETTING: London’s Highgate Cemetery and the adjacent old house comprising several flats are lovingly and hauntingly described in Her Fearful Symmetry, by Audrey Niffenegger.
DESCRIPTION: Beatrice and Virgil, by Yann Martel, includes an amazingly comprehensive description of a pear.
REAL-TIME DESCRIPTIVE ACTION: A Man in Full, by Tom Wolfe, includes two heart-pounding, second-by-second, descriptive passages. One relates an accident in a frozen foods warehouse, and the other describes the horse breeding process in mesmerizing detail. I could feel the heat from the horse’s breath when he snorted!
PAGE-TURNER ACTION: My husband and I both got hooked on Lee Child’s Jack Reacher novels when we picked up a number of them at a book exchange with fellow cruisers in Pago Pago, American Samoa. Killing Floor is first in the series, and all the early ones really do have that “page-turner” characteristic.
SUSPENSE: I remember feeling quite frightened as a junior-high student while reading The Turn of the Screw, by Henry James, in bed with a flashlight under the covers (so my parents wouldn’t know I was still awake on a school night). But I couldn’t stop reading: I had to know what happened!
And then there’s The Auctioneer, by Joan Samson. My husband read it first, and I remember his shuddering with dread next to me while he was reading it. “What?” I said. “This is really scary,” he told me. “What’s happening?” I asked. “Nothing,” he said. I didn’t get it until I read it, and then I did. Shudder!
But I only remember two books that scared me so much that I had nightmares about them. The first was a spy novel (by Robert Ludlum, I think) that I read in the late 1970s. All I can remember about it now is that the main character was an American architect in Europe and that I had a very scary dream about it one night during the time I was reading it.
The other was Stephen King’s The Shining. There is nothing scarier than that whirring/whishing sound chasing that little boy as he rides his tricycle down the hall of that haunted hotel. Not even flying monkeys!
SYMPATHETIC VILLAIN: I still feel sympathy every time I think of “the other” creature, the one out to kill the super-intelligent golden retriever, in Dean Koontz’s Watchers. It’s still my favorite Dean Koontz book although I quite liked his more recent humorous thriller, Life Expectancy, as well.
HUMOR: Carl Hiaasen is a master. Double Whammy, his second novel following his solo debut Tourist Season, is still my favorite. And then, of course, there are the Stephanie Plum novels by Janet Evanovich about a young woman bounty hunter in modern-day New Jersey. (I was going to say, “And then for the girls…” but changed my mind when I remembered the man sitting next to me in an airport laughing as he read one.) One of my friends kept urging me to read them years ago, and I kept resisting (A girl bounty hunter? Are you serious?) but finally relented and never turned back. These novels by Hiaasen and Evanovich are also mysteries, so they are especially appealing to me.
There are scenes in two novels that caused me to belly laugh so hard it was difficult to stop: Walking Across Egypt, by Clyde Edgerton, and The Accidental Tourist, by Anne Tyler. I highly recommend them.
DIALOGUE: When it comes to snappy dialogue, you can’t beat Robert B. Parker. I have greatly enjoyed both his Spenser and his Jesse Stone detective mysteries.
IMAGINATIVENESS: Life of Pi, by Yann Martel, tops my list of favorites in this category, but pretty much anything by Kurt Vonnegut (Cat’s Cradle is my favorite) falls neatly into this category as well. I would also add Carl Hiaasen in this list except that he claims much of the zany antics that take place in his novels were gleaned not from his own imagination but from news articles. (Being a former Miami resident myself, I believe him!)
CREATIVITY: Bel Canto, by Ann Patchett, is one of my favorite novels. In it, she deftly evokes an opera while writing about lovers of opera. Brilliant!
IRONY: This is one of my favorite aspects of fiction. The following novels depend upon it: Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, by Dai Sijie, and The Bingo Palace, by Louise Erdrich.
IMPRESSIONISTIC REALISM: What captures this better than Catch-22, by Joseph Heller?
COMING OF AGE: Besides the old standbys Catcher in the Rye, by J.D. Salinger, and A Separate Peace, by John Knowles, I quite enjoyed John Grisham’s A Painted House.
SHORT STORIES: I was most impressed by the literary prowess of Isabel Allende in her short story collection The Stories of Eva Luna.
EMOTIONALLY IMPACTING: Sophie’s Choice, by William Styron, and A Drink Before the War, by Dennis Lehane. Need I say more? Just read them at a time when you can give your heart a few days to rest before you pick up another novel. You’ll need it.
TITLE: A fiction title should be significant in relation to the story, reflect the mood of the story, not be overly long, and be intriguing in itself. I consider Coconut Chaos, the title of a novel about Pitcairn Island by Diana Souhami, to be a perfect title. Do you have a favorite fiction title?
CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT: There are so many books with excellent characters that I can’t choose even one. From John LeCarré to Anne Tyler, Emily Brontë to Joseph Conrad, Herman Wouk to James Clavell, authors have been creating unforgettable characters for us to love or hate for centuries. Characters are what fiction is all about. When a reader of my novel Sailing Away from the Moon told me he would “never forget Maggie,” the main character, I knew I’d gotten something right. Who is your favorite character?