Match me a book, find me a find

The thought of blogging sort of gives me the creeps.

Someone told me you should write blogs like you’re talking to a friend but when I talk to my friends, I see their faces, their reaction, and they answer back. Blogging is like writing a letter, rolling it up in a bottle, and throwing it in the ocean. Your thoughts are exposed but you don’t know who will read it. Too bad blogging is not as romantic as a letter in a floating bottle.

I should just get with it. Everyone does it. Put hesitations aside and just write what I want to write about.

Well, last week my younger sister asked me for a book recommendation. I sat at my desk and began to brainstorm what new book she might like. I had to keep up my good track record with her.

She had been staying with me for a few weeks in New York. The first night, when I noticed she was going to bed without a book, I gave her a copy of Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld. It’s about a prep school. My sister attended a prep school. I figured she might like it. That night, the light stayed on much longer than I wanted, as she paged through the book.

A few days later, I asked her if she liked the book. She said yes. She said yes! It’s like successfully matching up your single friends.

When you work in publishing, people ask you for book suggestions. And I enjoy pairing up a book with a person but along with it, comes a grave responsibility. Recommending a book is not like recommending a song, where the track lasts four minutes and it’s over. A book is commitment, it’s a nightly dialogue between you and this thing propped up on your lap.

I had recently read Alice Munro’s beautiful collection of stories, Too Much Happiness. I enjoyed listening to the sound of her sentences in my head. Her words echoed with truth and simplicity. So, when my friend, an overworked grad student, asked for a recommendation I thought of Alice Munro. I had loved it and I figured short stories were perfect for her—ideal for someone with limited reading time.

A couple of months later, she came to visit and there was the small book, shoved in her backpack. I almost forgot that I had ever given it to her.

It wasn’t a good sign. After a couple of months, books you haven’t finished go stale. In fact, they should come with an expiration date, or else it becomes the homework assignment you keep avoiding.

I meekly asked her if she was enjoying the book.

She smiled, and said yes, but said, she didn’t really get the stories. They were a little arcane and a little weird.

I couldn’t help but feel bad. She was carrying the book around because she felt she owed it to me to finish it. But the book just wasn’t her thing. She likes a well-written book with a strong plot and relatable characters. She doesn’t want to guess what the author is trying to say, or try to find some hidden meaning—that’s too fussy and useless. It was a good reminder that there are different kinds of readers. A good recommendation has the reader in mind, and I forgot that.

I felt bad because when a busy person seeks your advice, and finds the time to begin a new book, you want them to be reading something they quickly connect with… or else they’ll just turn to their iPod the next time they have a few minutes to spare.

Anyone can toss a book aside if it’s not their cup of tea but like any good match-maker, you want minimal mismatches, or else you’ll end up with no patronage.

Graceful, Gorgeous Storytelling on Stage

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of being in the audience at Seattle's Moore Theatre as NPR's Michele Norris interviewed Rosanne Cash on-stage. I was reminded of this today when I saw a starred review for Cash's forthcoming memoir, Composed (Viking, Aug 10), in Kirkus Reviews, which described the book as "beautifully written meditations on love, death, family and redemption." After hearing Cash in conversation with Michele Norris, during which Cash read a bit from her memoir, I'm eager to experience the full work this summer and I have no doubt that "a generosity of spirit informs her portraits" in the book.

The evening's event, which was taped as a Mother's Day special that aired this past Sunday on NPR, was a touching exploration of words spoken, written, and sung. I've been a fan of Rosanne Cash's since being introduced to her through Black Cadillac. Hearing her on-stage was another experience altogether; her voice was as clear and lovely and passionate as it is on her albums, but also so pure, stripped of any production, that it was like listening to glass turning into water. The two most moving moments for me were when Michele Norris asked Cash about lullabies and she broke into song from her seat, and again when she spoke about the way she wrote songs and prose. Here was a woman whose life's work defines lyricism.

Here, too, was someone clearly committed to her family, and who spoke about the choices she made with her own children and how those choices were both similar and different from decisions made by her parents and stepmother (Cash is the daughter of Johnny Cash and Vivian Liberto, and the step-daughter of June Carter Cash). For the first time onstage, Cash sang with her daughter, Chelsea Crowell, who has taken up the musical mantle of an astonishingly gifted American songmaking family. Another moment in the evening featured a clip of Cash speaking and then singing with her father, from a documentary about Johnny Cash's life that was taped shortly before he passed away (and which can be seen on NPR's site).

I'm writing about this event today because of the review and because I'm listening to Cash's new CD The List , and also because her work brings to mind the question of different forums for storytelling. Both Rosanne Cash and Johnny Cash are exemplars of songwriting that speaks to story in similar ways to prose and poetry. Other songwriters in the same vein for me are Bruce Springsteen, Josh Ritter, Emmylou Harris, Paul Simon, Bob Dylan (see also Dylan's memoirs), Lucinda Williams, Gillian Welch and far too many more to name. For me, as for many others, the musicians who are storytellers are most often country, folk, and blues singers--or pop/rock artists leading from those roots. And their stories are often mythic in their specificity: tales of heartbreak and history through individual lives. Which is in line with what superb short story writers do, including some of my favorites: John McGahern, Eudora Welty, Flannery O'Connor, Frederick Busch, Jhumpa Lahiri, and most especially Andre Dubus.

Who are your favorite storytelling singers? Which songs tell stories that lift you up, draw you in, tell you about people and places you either don't know, or perhaps know too well?