I can't figure out what's going on. I know I read a ton last month, but I can't seem to bring any of the titles into my mind. (As soon as I press publish on this post they will flood into my brain.) So here's a quick list of the books I remember:
The Nightingale by Kristin Hannah. This is on the best-seller lists and is getting a lot of buzz, and deservedly so. It's quite good. I learned history from it, too, such as the fact that gazillions of people evacuated Paris when the Nazis first occupied it. And I was reminded of the hardships that Europeans faced during World War II.
That's the only novel I can think of that I read recently, and I usually inhale novels like crazy. But, I have been dipping in and out of a lot of writing books. I don't so much read them cover to cover, because they have inspiration and exercises in them that lead me to the page.
Wild Women, Wild Voices by Judy Reeves. I wrote a whole review of this book here. I'm still working with it for journaling ideas and I like it a lot. Its not so much a book that's going to help you with plotting or characterization, but more the basic writing stuff, like expressing yourself on the page.
The Plot Whisperer by Martha Alderson. This is a book that will help you with your plotting (and there's some info on characterization as well). I bought it on a trip to Seattle and wrote more about it here.
Naming the World, edited by Bret Anthony Johnston. This is most definitely not a book you sit down and read cover to cover, because it is a book of writing exercises. (Although each exercise is preceded by an essay from the author who submitted it.) Good stuff in here.
Into the Woods by John Yorke. This is a book on structure and I am loving it. I ordered it from a bookseller in England (through Amazon) and it took forever to get here and then my husband set the envelope aside under a pile of mail so it took even longer for me to actually find it, but it was worth the wait. An amazing, excellent book on structure, and its readable, too. I embedded a video below of him relating "how all storytelling has worked since the beginning of time" at Google UK.
All this reading on story structure has led me to another activity: going to movies. More on that in my next post. In the meantime, what have you been reading?
Previous months posts are (which I offer in case you need recommendations):