{a thought for Thursday} Inspiration

"Inspiration usually comes during work, rather than before it." -- Madeleine L'Engle


Author event
Geraldine Brooks, author of People of the Book, March, and others, is touring for her newest book, Caleb's Crossing. It's the fictional story of the first Native American to graduate from Harvard College. She will be at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee at 7 p.m. May 12. Tickets are $5 for this closed-store event, and ticket holders will get 20 percent of the book's price.

Other tour dates are here.

{a thought for Thursday} Confusion

"I wondered how it could be that people could love God and hate one another."
— Julie Orringer (How to Breathe Underwater)

Julie will be at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee at 7 p.m. tomorrow (April 29) for her new book, The Invisible Bridge. (Read the Journal Sentinel's interview with Orringer.)

{a thought for Thursday} Travel light

"Slippery slope. I carry a spare shirt, pretty soon I'm carrying spare pants. Then I'd need a suitcase. Next thing I know, I've got a house and a car and a savings plan and I'm filling out all kinds of forms."
— Lee Child (Bad Luck And Trouble)

Author event tomorrow!
Valerie Laken will be doing a book release reading for her collection of short stories, Separate Kingdoms, at 7 p.m. at Boswell Book Company in Milwaukee. (You may remember her as the author of the novel Dream House.) Other stops on Laken's tour are here.

{read: bestselling memoir} Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott

This book is a classic and my favorite memoir about writing and life. Every time I pick it up, it is even better than I had remembered - and that’s saying something. I’m writing about it today because I’m going to see Anne Lamott tonight at Alverno College in Milwaukee (tickets still available for $16 +$5 fee, call 414-382-6044 between noon and 6 p.m.) . She’s on tour for the paperback release of Imperfect Birds (other tour dates here).

You may think that you wouldn’t like this book because you’re not a writer, but if you’ve ever faced a huge project that you’ve put off until the last possible minute, worried that all your friends were conspiring against you, eaten school lunches, or had your tonsils taken out, you’ll find something to relate to in this book.

Here’s one of my favorite parts. (Some background first: Pammy is Anne’s best friend, and she’s dying of cancer.)

We had gone shopping for a dress for me to wear that night to a nightclub with the man I was seeing at the time. Pammy was in a wheelchair, wearing her Queen Mum wig, the Easy Rider look in her eyes. I tried on a lavender minidress, which is not my usual style. I tend to wear big, baggy clothes. People used to tell me that I dressed like John Goodman. Anyway, the dress fit perfectly, and I came out to model it for her. I stood there feeling very shy and self-conscious and pleased. Then I said, “Do you think it makes my hips look too big?” and she said to me slowly, “Annie? I really don’t think you have that kind of time.” ( p. 170)

Anne Lamott is the kind of person who tucks an index card in her back pocket when she takes her dog for a walk in case she sees something that she wants to write down, but she folds it lengthwise so she doesn’t look bulky. Who wouldn’t love her?


Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott (Anchor Books Doubleday, 1995)
My rating: 5 stars

{giveaway winner} Congratulations, rosalindraasch!

The winner of {th}ink’s first giveaway is rosalindraasch! She will receive a personalized, signed copy of You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon. {th}ink would like to thank Siobhan for donating the book for our giveaway, and we hope that those of you have become followers during this contest stay tuned for more fun crafts, succinct book reviews, great photos, thought-provoking quotes, and future giveaways! 



Upcoming author events


Don’t miss Hannah Pittard, on tour for The Fates Will Find Their Way. She’ll be at Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, Wis., tomorrow (April 6) at 7 p.m. Other events across the U.S. are here. To whet your appetite, here’s a quote from the book:
 "Words like lucky and advantages we knew, even at our young age, were upscale euphemisms for not poor, not the son of a drunk and, later, not the son of a suicidal mother."



More reading fun

Don’t miss Dewey’s 24-Hour Read-a-thon this weekend, beginning at noon GMT April 9! From the official event website at http://24hourreadathon.com, here’s an event description in a nutshell: “For 24 hours, we read books, post to our blogs about our reading, and visit other readers’ blogs. We also participate in mini-challenges throughout the day. It happens twice a year, in April and in October.”



If you don’t want to read (or think you don’t have time), you can also host a mini-challenge or be a cheerleader. Check out the website to see how you can join readers worldwide in this fun event, and tell us about your plans (and later your experience) and the comments for this post! We can’t wait to hear from you.

{a thought for Thursday} Choices and consequences

"People took what they wanted, they clutched at coincidences, the few there were, and made a life from them. . . . Choices are made in brief seconds and paid for in the time that remains."
— Paolo Giordano (The Solitude of Prime Numbers)

Paolo Giordano will be reading in Italian from The Solitude of Prime Numbers, with Angela Damiani reading in English, at Boswell Books. The event begins at 7 p.m. April 6.

Don't miss {th}ink's first giveaway! Sign up by April 1 to win a personalized, signed copy of You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon.

{read: bestselling fiction} The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht

This is one
This is one of the best books I've read recently. It's a perfect blend of storytelling, a protagonist I liked but who was complex, and a hint of magical realism. After being disappointed by Open City, which many people loved but I couldn't get into, I was glad that this much-hyped book lived up to the buzz for me.

Natalia Stefanovi is searching for answers to her grandfather's death in a war-torn Balkan country that's strongly reminiscent of the former Yugoslavia. Like her grandfather, she's a doctor, and she learns of his death when she and her longtime friend, Zora, are traveling to an orphanage across the border, post-war, to vaccinate the children. She was the only one who knew he had cancer, but she didn't know he had left home, ostensibly to see her, and she didn't know that he had died until she returns a page from her grandmother. (She and Zora have pagers but no cell phones.)

Pieces of this book hit just the right tone, neither too subtle nor too heavy handed. I was almost holding my breath, waiting to see if Tea got it right, and I was never disappointed. In this, she reminds me of Tom Franklin and his dialogue in Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter. Although these are two completely different stories, the authors find just the right tone and approach.

I'd definitely recommend this to anyone who doesn't mind a touch of the magical (a deathless man, for example) in their fiction. I know I'll be reading it again.

The Tiger’s Wife by Tea Obreht (Random House, 2011)
My rating: 4 stars

Don’t miss these two great author events!
It’s {th}ink's first giveaway! You could win a signed, personalized copy of You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon.

April 1 - Author Nina Revoyr (Wingshooters) will be at Next Chapter Bookshop in Mequon, Wis., at 7 p.m. (See other tour dates/locations.)

{a thought for Thursday} Butterflies

"...butterflies were wind energy made visible."
— Anne Lamott (Imperfect Birds)

See Anne Lamott on tour for the paperback release of Imperfect Birds! For those of you in the Milwaukee area, she's speaking at Alverno College on April 12. Tickets are $16 and include a signed, paperback copy of Imperfect Birds. Buy tickets by calling Alverno's box office (414-382-6044).

And don't miss {th}ink's first giveaway! You could win a signed, personalized copy of You Know When the Men are Gone by Siobhan Fallon.