It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog. Meanwhile, here's what I'll be reading this week:

Emily Post's Manners in a Digital World: Living Well Online by Daniel Post Senning (review coming soon!)
Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford. This is the last novel I've assigned to my class of high schoolers for the semester. I've got to get it reread it before they're finished with Angela's Ashes.
Charles Dickens by Simon Callow (I saw the play in London back in the fall.)

Another thing I'm looking forward to this week is hearing Jill McCorkle talk about her latest book, Life After Life, which I reviewed a few weeks ago. She'll be at the Margaret Mitchell House in Atlanta tomorrow night, Tuesday 4/30 at 7. You can purchase tickets on their website.

Asheville's Richmond Hill Inn

I wrote about several literary places in Asheville, NC after a visit there with my family in 2009. One of them was the Richmond Hill Inn, which was once a beautiful old hotel that burned a few months prior to my visit. Fire investigators determined that the first was started by an arsonist, but the case wasn't solved until late last year. The owner of the hotel, who was facing bankruptcy, set the fire. Isn't that just sad? The land where the hotel was was where Civil War poet Sidney Lanier camped one winter. I wrote more about seeing this place here.

It's Monday! What are you reading?

 

This event is hosted by Sheila from Book Journey. Go check out her blog. Meanwhile, here's what I'll be reading this week. I'm feeling ambitious:

Lipstick Jungle by Candace Bushnell (I need to get in a book where I don't have to think after Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson, which I finished over the weekend. If you've read this book you probably understand.)
Rereading Angela's Ashes by Frank McCourt. I've assigned this to my high school literature class to read over spring break. I hope they're enjoying it.
Z by Therese Anne Fowler (I can't wait to start this one!)
Charles Dickens by Simon Callow (I saw the play in London back in the fall.)

Writers' Houses: Flannery O'Connor

Ann Napolitano, author of A Good Hard Look, which I read a couple years ago and wrote about, contributed recently to Writers' Houses. Her article, Where Flannery Became Flannery, is about her visit to O'Connor's childhood home in Savannah, Georgia, after visiting her farm in Milledgeville for seven years while working on her novel. Napolitano writes very well about the thrill you can get from visiting the place where an author got her start, either in life or as a writer. Take a look.

Look what I just got in the mail!

I can't wait to start reading these two books. Therese Ann Fowler and I were classmates in Elaine Neil Orr's creative writing workshop at NC State in 2005. I'm so excited for both of them and their new books.