This is original content by C.A. Marks | Moxie Beautiful
I don’t have any life hacks to tell you about today for the #BlogSpringFever challenge but I would like to share My Moxie Reading List.
There are some who think reading fiction is a waste of time. I BEG TO DIFFER.
Without getting into some sort of long drawn-out digitaliloquy about why I prefer fiction and creative nonfiction to fiction and not wanting to make the nonfiction people feel bad, I prefer fiction and creative nonfiction for the following reasons:
It makes me think
Vocabulary
Relatability
Empathy
Emotions
Awareness
Grows creativity
Generates new ideas.
Culture
Typically, I don’t care for fantasy, sci-fi, cheap & easy predictable soft porn romance, westerns, horror, mystery or any other new-fangled genre. I like the regular stories, with characters I could possibly relate to, with real problems.
Of course, then there are the easy reads I like as well, or as some like to call it Chick Lit.
I also like creative nonfiction – or in other words, real-life stories told well.
So, what is on my nightstand waiting to be opened?
My Moxie Reading List
The Red Leather Diary by Lily Koppel
For more than half a century, the red leather diary languished inside a steamer trunk. Rescued from a Dumpster on Manhattan’s Upper West Side, it found its way to Lily Koppel, a young writer, who opened its tarnished brass lock and journeyed into an enthralling past. The diary painted a breathtaking portrait of a bygone New York—of glamorous nights at El Morocco and elegant teas at Schrafft’s during the 1920s and ’30s—and of the headstrong, endearing teenager who filled its pages with her hopes, heartaches, and vivid recollections. Intrigued, Koppel followed her only clue, a frontispiece inscription, to its now ninety-year-old owner, Florence Wolfson, and was enchanted as Florence, reunited with her diary, rediscovered a lost younger self-burning with artistic fervor.
Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walters
From the moment it opens—on a rocky patch of Italian coastline, circa 1962, when a daydreaming young innkeeper looks out over the water and spies a mysterious woman approaching him on a boat—Jess Walter’s Beautiful Ruins is a dazzling, yet deeply human, roller coaster of a novel. From the lavish set of Cleopatra to the shabby revelry of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, to the back lots of contemporary Hollywood, Beautiful Ruins is gloriously inventive and constantly surprising—a story of flawed yet fascinating people navigating the rocky shores of their lives while clinging to their improbable dreams.
Summer at Tiffany by Marjorie Hart –
New York City, 1945. Marjorie Jacobson and her best friend, Marty Garrett, arrive fresh from the Kappa house at the University of Iowa hoping to find summer positions as shopgirls. Turned away from the top department stores, they miraculously find jobs as pages at Tiffany & Co., becoming the first women to ever work on the sales floor, a diamond-filled day job replete with Tiffany-blue shirtwaist dresses from Bonwit Teller’s—and the envy of all their friends.
These are, of course, just a few. As you can tell from the featured image I have many. And I can always go to my Nora Ephron collection over and over again. Some of the books in the picture I’ve already read.
Currently, I am reading Empire Falls and it was suggested by an author/teacher Linda Busby Parker. I met her at a writers conference I attended earlier in the year in Pell City.
In her talk at the conference, she explained the importance of how character, plot, and themes emerge from place. She used this book, Empire Falls by Richard Russo to make her point. She also talked about The Shipping News by Annie Proulx. But Empire Falls caught my attention the most. I had heard of both books and I almost purchased Empire Falls several years ago when it first came out but for whatever reason decided against it back then.
Until Linda’s talk back in February. I am currently reading the book and LOVE IT. I don’t want it to end.
Empire Falls by Richard Russo
Miles Roby has been slinging burgers at the Empire Grill for 20 years, a job that cost him his college education and much of his self-respect. What keeps him there? It could be his bright, sensitive daughter Tick, who needs all his help surviving the local high school. Or maybe it’s Janine, Miles’ soon-to-be ex-wife, who’s taken up with a noxiously vain health-club proprietor. Or perhaps it’s the imperious Francine Whiting, who owns everything in town–and seems to believe that “everything” includes Miles himself. In Empire Falls Richard Russo delves deep into the blue-collar heart of America in a work that overflows with hilarity, heartache, and grace.
And apparently it was a television mini-series back in 2005? Who knew?! I wonder how I can catch that again?
What’s on your reading list?
Ciao Mio Amore,
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