Celebrating the Bookish

Gracias to Lindsay Merbaum, author, high priestess of home mixology, and leader of the Pick Your Potions’ Study Coven, for featuring Ainslie Hogarth’s Motherthing in her latest study coven. Motherthing is sinister, sad, and stunning and prompted a thought provoking discussion of mothers and motherhood.

I’m a fan of Lindsay’s cocktail recipes. She designed a bourbon drink for my first novel The Lockhart Women. I also highly recommend Lindsay’s study covens. In addition to the main text, Lindsay creates a detailed and inspiring syllabus and offers creative writing prompts to accompany the readings.

The next coven meeting, an ocean horror-themed class, is in July and will feature Our Wives Under the Sea by Julia Armfield.

Last weekend, I talked storytelling and politics with these incredibly smart women, Victoria Patterson, Dana Johnson, and Lisa Alvarez. My books were in great company on the rack with their wonderful titles. Thanks Flintridge bookstore for vending books and Litfest in the Dena for putting the festival together.

Victoria asked challenging questions. There were points in the conversation that I really wanted to go sit down in the audience and listen instead of trying to think up an answer.

For example, how do we continue to create art in these times when democracy is imploding and it’s hard to believe in the decency of humanity?

Here’s what we came up with: Give ourselves grace, turn off the news, find joy in other artists, and do what we can. Write letters, march, support community food banks, campaign for better politicians.

And as Dana Johnson said, (forgive my paraphrase of her wise words) remember that no sees the world like we do from our own eyes, and that no one can tell our stories like we do.

We also sat in on a powerful panel on “Recovering Victim -Survivor Voices” where I got to meet Victoria Waddle in person, add Casandra Lopez’s poems and Cassandra Lane’s memoir to my “want to read” stack, and see Jo Scott-Coe again.

Jo Scott-Coe is also reading next Wednesday at Riverside City College at their Lit-Chella Festival, along with me, Editor Gina Rae Duran, Mark Hein, and Thea Pueschel. We will be reading from The White Picket Fence Anthology, Stories of Individuality vs Rebelliousness from Flower Song Press.

My dear friend Lisa Alvarez has been an English professor at Irvine Valley College (the little college in the orange groves as she’s always called IVC) for 33 years and is retiring this year. Issue 29 of the wonderful literary magazine, “The Ear,” is dedicated to Lisa.

Kristen Skjonsby wrote in the issue’s Editorial Note that Lisa “has proven to us that there is no real difference between the big world and our little college in the orange groves. One should strive to bring the world to our small place, not to keep it out. This seeming irony is what brings us closer together, and we must do everything we can to maintain the intimacy, conversation, and connectedness that art provides.”

True words, Kristen. Bravo, Lisa!

I met Lisa K. Richter in one of Professor Alvarez’s workshops and got to celebrate her new memoir fly my darling, a love story, at her beautiful top of Laguna Beach home. There were flowers, family, friends, and food and an amazing view of the Pacific Ocean, as well as a beautiful tribute from Lisa’s daughter to her mom.

This week I met with Kathy Dunlap’s book club in her beautiful hilltop home up in Cowan Heights to discuss Those People Behind Us. I was too busy talking and listening to take any photos, but Kathy gifted me these beautiful note cards by her late mother, the artist Helen Gerrard.

Kathy has room enough for a dining table that seats twenty people (!) and every seat was taken with a variety of book loving women with the best stories. One of them has a nearby menagerie with horses, llamas, chickens, dogs, and a zebra. One was a flight attendant who has evacuated airplanes. Kathy’s daughter teaches dance. Some of us talked about glaucoma and hearing aids but mostly we talked books.

I’m reasonably sure not everyone in Kathy’s book club loved my book but I admired their questions and comments about what they found confusing or disturbing and their willingness to keep turning the page.

There are all kinds of book clubs and recently the LA Times has been shouting out a few of them.

The Booked Babes (pictured above) recently read “Perfume: The Story of a Murderer” by Patrick Süskind and journeyed to a gothic mansion in La Jolla to discuss the novel. They also played croquet, designed a custom perfume, and took lots of photos.

I’m wondering why they didn’t put down their champagne glasses and include the book they were discussing in the photo.

Becky’s Book Club in Pacific Palisades has been meeting for over 25 years. Members, ages 83 to their 90s, have collectively read 252 books since 2001. They don’t dress up in costumes or travel to gothic mansions.

They don’t always agree on the books either. They couldn’t stand Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays for example, but the group’s open-mindedness, willingness to read a wide variety of books on different subjects, and respect for other members has kept the group going for all these years.

“We don’t reject any ideas,” says member Gail Heltzer. “Everybody has opinions and is extremely respectful, and everyone leaves smarter.”

My kind of book club.

Saturday May 9th is the Surf City Author Fest. Twenty some authors will be set up in front of the Central Library in Huntington Beach talking and vending books just in time for Mother’s Day shopping. Come by between 10 am and 4 pm.

I’m also moderating a panel with five local authors at 2 pm.

It’s all free, there’s some great book swag, terrific prizes, and I get to hang out with some of my favorite authors.

Happy Mother’s Day. Buy your mom a book!