Thanks for the shout out, Betsy! Mel & Dave are moving their weekly newsletter to Substack in a couple of weeks, and the first episode of season 6 of their podcast, Strong Sense of Place, drops on May 24th. They've got some great locations lined up with some awesome book recommendations for each location. :)
I love Scotland, including its rich literary tradition--Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, et. al. For a taste of the real Scotland in more recent times, I recommend, first, three novels by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, written between 1932 and 1934: "Sunset Song," "Cloud Howe," and "Gray Granite." Together they trace the story of the indomitable heroine,, Chris Guthre, from her early marriage to a youth who would fight in WWI, to her old age, alone, all played out against a backdrop of Scottish history and culture. "Sunset Song" has often been called the best Scottish novel of the 20th Century. Other wonderful reads: "Blood Hunt," by Neil M. Gunn, a murder story exploring the traditions and values of the Highlands; and, for something lighter, "Whisky Galore," by Compton MacKenzie, set in a fictional island in the Hebrides, about the effects of a shortage of single malt on the inhabitants of that place during WWII. (This volume comes complete with a brief glossary of Gaelic expressions.) For the dark side of Edinburgh, read any of the Inspector Rebus mysteries by Ian Rankin. p.s. for California in the 1960's, read Joan Didion's essay collection "Slouching Toward Bethlehem."
Sometimes seeing a place through the eyes of another person can give more depth to your experience. My husband Don and I traveled around Spain while reading Michener’s Iberia. His descriptions of the culture, countryside and history illuminated our experience tremendously. While Iberia is not fiction, I wanted to share my memory because it remains so vivd even after 30 years.
I agree -- seeing a place through the eyes of another fellow traveler or someone who who lives in a particular place can open our own eyes. Sometimes it's fiction and sometimes nonfiction. Essay and memoirs can also be really great depending on their focus. I do love novels and stories set in various locations, though. There's something about the way the setting infiltrates my imagination as I sink into the story that just stays with me.
I, too, collect fabulous sentences, those strings of words I wish I'd written. Here's the most recent, a description of Marlon Brando by Ann Wilson: "He was refined, combustible, and elemental." The source is Kicking & Dreaming, the autobiography she and her sister co-wrote and recently released. Rock - and write - on!
A review from the past of a book which has as much to offer a writer of fiction as a local historian: https://aaslh.org/review-zen-and-the-art-of-local-history/ if you want to understand place. One of its authors, Carol Kammen, long associated with Cornell, wrote an essay about why she decided to keep an ‘anti-index’ and I began following her example 40 years ago, when she became a regular contributor to Local History Magazine, which my wife Susan Griffiths and I published 1984-2004, when a new publisher took over. Carol is the local historian I most admire. Read the review. An education in itself. The title alone should grab you Betsy.🐰
Thank you for this fabulous link, Robert! I am instantly drawn by the idea of focusing on local history. Stories, fiction and nonfiction, would be that much more enhanced by moving past historical research a locality or give it less attention. This is wonderful!
I have found Carol Kammen’s anti-index article (from 1990) we published in Local History Magazine, which I will happily send to you via email if you send me contact details. My email address is robert@historybybus.org.uk 🐰
I'm going back home to Missouri next week for a visit with my sister. I grew up there, and returned to live there for 3 /12 years in my 50's. I wrote a thriller set in Kansas City, where I lived for five years. For my trip to Provence and a week in Julia Child's home there, I read the cookbook, and the memoir "Julie and Julia" by Julie Powell. I read Death on the Nile before my Egypt trip, and The Call of the Wild before I moved to Alaska. I read Sometimes a Great Notion before moving to Portland, Oregon. But before my trip to Venice, I read only travel guides, which was true for most of the places I've traveled to. Thank you for this interesting stack and question!
I suspect you are landing in Missouri as I type these words, Sandra. I hope you have a wonderful trip. I can't think of a better book to read before heading to Provence than "Julia and Julia" unless it is JC's own memoir, "My Life in France." All your book picks seem perfect for the trips you took. If you ever go back to Venice (or want to revisit it from afar) do check out the Brunetti books -- they are so far from the usual police procedurals and if you read them from the beginning books to the more recent ones you'll get a sense of the city that few others convey along with the changes. When we went back, we took a book that outlined walks based on the lead characters's books and it was a great way to get lost in a beautiful, mysterious, strange city.
Thank you so much, Betsy. I don't leave until a week from today, so not landing yet. I did read a few of the Brunetti books, long after my trip to Venice. I wish I could time travel back and see it all again. It was before the giant ships with their tens of thousands of travelors.
Oh Betsy, the love for In Another Life has made my week- thank you! I'm flirting with a literary return to Languedoc right now, picking up some of the threads of this first novel and weaving them into another flight of historical fancy. Of course, more on-the-ground research will be required... :-)
So many of my most beloved authors are Irish, and Ireland is one of my most beloved places (so much so that I set my second novel there) that novels set in Ireland come first to mind when I think of books that transport me: Colm Toíbín, Tana French, Donal Ryan, Anne Enright, Dervla McTiernan all land me on the Emerald Isle.
I've also recently discovered Peter May, who wrote a mystery series set on a remote island off Scotland's northwest coast. Jesmyn Ward takes me to Mississippi, Dennish Lehane to Boston, Peter Heller to whatever wilderness he's writing about that I will never experience. I love writers with deep senses of place, who make their landscapes as vital and real as their characters.
I am long overdue when it comes to reading more books set in Ireland. I was just telling a friend this morning that I have not read any Colm Tobin although I have always wanted to. Donal Ryan's "Queen of Dirt Island" was such a great read -- I loved the structure of it. I wrote about that book, "Milkman" (Anna Burns) and Claire Keegan's "Small Things Like These" for Elizabeth Held at "What to read if..." https://whattoreadif.substack.com/p/queen-dirt-island-small-things-like-these-milkma?utm_source=publication-search
I love reading about places, always have. I still want to go to Antarctica because of My Last Continent by Midge Raymond.
As to this week's sentence, it is from Angeline by Anna Quinn, an unusual novel set in the PNW, where I am right now, not far from the (currently rainy) Puget Sound.
"Dark clouds gather above, clutching rain and casting dark shadows across the rippled sand."
So nice to see the shout-out to David Abrams's #SundaySentence project. Yes, there are still some of us on Twitter who have kept it going. I've wondered if it could find a new home here on Substack, but hashtags don't seem to be a thing here!
No, you're right, no hashtags but I'm still going to put the request out there every week in this newsletter. Maybe we can figure out how to get more folks involved on Notes?
Great post! Really got me thinking. I do love books that take me somewhere else through another’s eyes. I remember having to be in Charleston SC for a month, so I devoured Prince of Tides. Gosh, that was in the 80’s. And my first trip to Italy reading Under The Tuscan Sun. And France, read a lot of Peter Mayle. Simple books for simpler times. Nowadays I read my book group selections when I travel, but should really get back to the travel inspired novels. I do indulge in regional cookbooks however. I love cookbooks so much. I almost always am inspired by regional cuisine.
I love regional cookbooks. In fact, they are fun to read while reading novels set in a particular place. And so many cookbooks are written by writers who have a gift for language and humor and insight. They are a joy, even if you never cook any of the recipes.
Hello, hello! I just learned about your lovely Substack from @sonovelicious. Thank you SO MUCH for the kind mention of Strong Sense of Place. I'm so happy you've been enjoying the show.
Also: ROBERT CRAIS! I read all of his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels when they came out. I have so much affection for those characters, and Crais' sense of LA is *so* strong. Have you read the lastest one? I haven't on my Kindle but haven't gotten to it yet.
Hello to you, Melissa and welcome! I have read most of Crais' earlier books but few of his more recent ones. He's always a fun read. He is a big fan of a crime writer you may be less familiar with who sets all his stories here in San Diego: Matt Coyle. His Rick Cahill series takes you all over the area and reveals a city that can appear very blue and bland on the outside but as dark as any LA night on the inside.
Thanks for the shout out, Betsy! Mel & Dave are moving their weekly newsletter to Substack in a couple of weeks, and the first episode of season 6 of their podcast, Strong Sense of Place, drops on May 24th. They've got some great locations lined up with some awesome book recommendations for each location. :)
Thanks for this update, Gayla. I'm going to be looking forward to that new Substack Just in time for my birthday!
Hi Galya and thank YOU! I can't wait for the new season of Strong Sense of Place.
I love Scotland, including its rich literary tradition--Robert Louis Stevenson, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, et. al. For a taste of the real Scotland in more recent times, I recommend, first, three novels by Lewis Grassic Gibbon, written between 1932 and 1934: "Sunset Song," "Cloud Howe," and "Gray Granite." Together they trace the story of the indomitable heroine,, Chris Guthre, from her early marriage to a youth who would fight in WWI, to her old age, alone, all played out against a backdrop of Scottish history and culture. "Sunset Song" has often been called the best Scottish novel of the 20th Century. Other wonderful reads: "Blood Hunt," by Neil M. Gunn, a murder story exploring the traditions and values of the Highlands; and, for something lighter, "Whisky Galore," by Compton MacKenzie, set in a fictional island in the Hebrides, about the effects of a shortage of single malt on the inhabitants of that place during WWII. (This volume comes complete with a brief glossary of Gaelic expressions.) For the dark side of Edinburgh, read any of the Inspector Rebus mysteries by Ian Rankin. p.s. for California in the 1960's, read Joan Didion's essay collection "Slouching Toward Bethlehem."
These are all wonderful recommendations, Andy, thank you. I've always wanted to walk through parts of Scotland. Maybe I can start with these books.
Sometimes seeing a place through the eyes of another person can give more depth to your experience. My husband Don and I traveled around Spain while reading Michener’s Iberia. His descriptions of the culture, countryside and history illuminated our experience tremendously. While Iberia is not fiction, I wanted to share my memory because it remains so vivd even after 30 years.
I agree -- seeing a place through the eyes of another fellow traveler or someone who who lives in a particular place can open our own eyes. Sometimes it's fiction and sometimes nonfiction. Essay and memoirs can also be really great depending on their focus. I do love novels and stories set in various locations, though. There's something about the way the setting infiltrates my imagination as I sink into the story that just stays with me.
I, too, collect fabulous sentences, those strings of words I wish I'd written. Here's the most recent, a description of Marlon Brando by Ann Wilson: "He was refined, combustible, and elemental." The source is Kicking & Dreaming, the autobiography she and her sister co-wrote and recently released. Rock - and write - on!
This was great, thank you, PJ! Is Ann Wilson the daughter of Brian Wilson/Beach Boys?
A review from the past of a book which has as much to offer a writer of fiction as a local historian: https://aaslh.org/review-zen-and-the-art-of-local-history/ if you want to understand place. One of its authors, Carol Kammen, long associated with Cornell, wrote an essay about why she decided to keep an ‘anti-index’ and I began following her example 40 years ago, when she became a regular contributor to Local History Magazine, which my wife Susan Griffiths and I published 1984-2004, when a new publisher took over. Carol is the local historian I most admire. Read the review. An education in itself. The title alone should grab you Betsy.🐰
Thank you for this fabulous link, Robert! I am instantly drawn by the idea of focusing on local history. Stories, fiction and nonfiction, would be that much more enhanced by moving past historical research a locality or give it less attention. This is wonderful!
I have found Carol Kammen’s anti-index article (from 1990) we published in Local History Magazine, which I will happily send to you via email if you send me contact details. My email address is robert@historybybus.org.uk 🐰
I'm going back home to Missouri next week for a visit with my sister. I grew up there, and returned to live there for 3 /12 years in my 50's. I wrote a thriller set in Kansas City, where I lived for five years. For my trip to Provence and a week in Julia Child's home there, I read the cookbook, and the memoir "Julie and Julia" by Julie Powell. I read Death on the Nile before my Egypt trip, and The Call of the Wild before I moved to Alaska. I read Sometimes a Great Notion before moving to Portland, Oregon. But before my trip to Venice, I read only travel guides, which was true for most of the places I've traveled to. Thank you for this interesting stack and question!
I suspect you are landing in Missouri as I type these words, Sandra. I hope you have a wonderful trip. I can't think of a better book to read before heading to Provence than "Julia and Julia" unless it is JC's own memoir, "My Life in France." All your book picks seem perfect for the trips you took. If you ever go back to Venice (or want to revisit it from afar) do check out the Brunetti books -- they are so far from the usual police procedurals and if you read them from the beginning books to the more recent ones you'll get a sense of the city that few others convey along with the changes. When we went back, we took a book that outlined walks based on the lead characters's books and it was a great way to get lost in a beautiful, mysterious, strange city.
Thank you so much, Betsy. I don't leave until a week from today, so not landing yet. I did read a few of the Brunetti books, long after my trip to Venice. I wish I could time travel back and see it all again. It was before the giant ships with their tens of thousands of travelors.
For good writers, place is another character.
You are so right about this. I would know LA anywhere even if the city's name were entirely removed. True for Boston, Venice, and Rome as well.
Oh Betsy, the love for In Another Life has made my week- thank you! I'm flirting with a literary return to Languedoc right now, picking up some of the threads of this first novel and weaving them into another flight of historical fancy. Of course, more on-the-ground research will be required... :-)
So many of my most beloved authors are Irish, and Ireland is one of my most beloved places (so much so that I set my second novel there) that novels set in Ireland come first to mind when I think of books that transport me: Colm Toíbín, Tana French, Donal Ryan, Anne Enright, Dervla McTiernan all land me on the Emerald Isle.
I've also recently discovered Peter May, who wrote a mystery series set on a remote island off Scotland's northwest coast. Jesmyn Ward takes me to Mississippi, Dennish Lehane to Boston, Peter Heller to whatever wilderness he's writing about that I will never experience. I love writers with deep senses of place, who make their landscapes as vital and real as their characters.
Beautiful post- thank you!
I am long overdue when it comes to reading more books set in Ireland. I was just telling a friend this morning that I have not read any Colm Tobin although I have always wanted to. Donal Ryan's "Queen of Dirt Island" was such a great read -- I loved the structure of it. I wrote about that book, "Milkman" (Anna Burns) and Claire Keegan's "Small Things Like These" for Elizabeth Held at "What to read if..." https://whattoreadif.substack.com/p/queen-dirt-island-small-things-like-these-milkma?utm_source=publication-search
I love reading about places, always have. I still want to go to Antarctica because of My Last Continent by Midge Raymond.
As to this week's sentence, it is from Angeline by Anna Quinn, an unusual novel set in the PNW, where I am right now, not far from the (currently rainy) Puget Sound.
"Dark clouds gather above, clutching rain and casting dark shadows across the rippled sand."
Wonderful novel and wonderful sentence, Jen! I liked Midge's book a lot as well.
I just heard she has a new novel coming out and I cant wait to read it.
So nice to see the shout-out to David Abrams's #SundaySentence project. Yes, there are still some of us on Twitter who have kept it going. I've wondered if it could find a new home here on Substack, but hashtags don't seem to be a thing here!
No, you're right, no hashtags but I'm still going to put the request out there every week in this newsletter. Maybe we can figure out how to get more folks involved on Notes?
I have no great ideas at the moment, but let me know if you do!
Great post! Really got me thinking. I do love books that take me somewhere else through another’s eyes. I remember having to be in Charleston SC for a month, so I devoured Prince of Tides. Gosh, that was in the 80’s. And my first trip to Italy reading Under The Tuscan Sun. And France, read a lot of Peter Mayle. Simple books for simpler times. Nowadays I read my book group selections when I travel, but should really get back to the travel inspired novels. I do indulge in regional cookbooks however. I love cookbooks so much. I almost always am inspired by regional cuisine.
I love regional cookbooks. In fact, they are fun to read while reading novels set in a particular place. And so many cookbooks are written by writers who have a gift for language and humor and insight. They are a joy, even if you never cook any of the recipes.
So true. My new indulgence is a California cookbook called Six California Kitchens. It’s fabulous!
Hello, hello! I just learned about your lovely Substack from @sonovelicious. Thank you SO MUCH for the kind mention of Strong Sense of Place. I'm so happy you've been enjoying the show.
Also: ROBERT CRAIS! I read all of his Elvis Cole/Joe Pike novels when they came out. I have so much affection for those characters, and Crais' sense of LA is *so* strong. Have you read the lastest one? I haven't on my Kindle but haven't gotten to it yet.
Hello to you, Melissa and welcome! I have read most of Crais' earlier books but few of his more recent ones. He's always a fun read. He is a big fan of a crime writer you may be less familiar with who sets all his stories here in San Diego: Matt Coyle. His Rick Cahill series takes you all over the area and reveals a city that can appear very blue and bland on the outside but as dark as any LA night on the inside.
Oh, fun! Way back in the day, I lived in Escondido for a few years. I'm into the idea of a darker San Diego. Thanks for that!
Nope! She's the guitar-playing sister in the rock band Heart. Her sister. Ann, is the singer. Popular in the '70-80s
Oooh, I haven't read "Milkman"- thank you for the wonderful recommendation. Claire Keegan, yes- she is extraordinary!
"Sometimes I wish we weren't married so I could ask you again." From Beautiful Ruins by Jess Walter.
How lovely this line is!