Mother’s weekly white wine lunch. Singer Marian Montgomery in the headscarf next to Mary Broomfield in pale yellow.
I’ll tell you all about it and much more at the Hotel Bel Air on July 8th at 10:30 if you come to Literary Affairs’ Books and Breakfast event. Click on the link below for tickets. It will be fun!
My father (a “landed alien” who never became an American citizen) called his mother, Anne (Annabelle) Lawless the Iron Duchess. She went to church every day and spent most of the rest of her time ruling the family from a seat at the kitchen table in Brockville, Ontario, drinking seemingly endless cups of tea.
I don’t know what it’s like where you are but here in Southern California where I am trying to work on the sequel to Chanel Bonfire (tentatively titled “Untitled Girl”), we’re having a heat wave. 100+ degrees today. How do you handle the heat?
Cathy from the BookLink Bookstore at Logan Airport
I love bookstores and the people who work in them. (My husband grew up in The BookStore of the University of Pennsylvania which his father ran while getting a graduate degree. And once upon a time in the early 80s I worked at the Barnes & Noble on Fifth Avenue in the Text Book Department.) They are portals to other times and places, islands of civility and calm in the crazy cacophonous world (especially the world of airports) and crossroads of storytelling and sharing. I can name every store I’ve been to in every city and town I’ve lived in or visited and sadly many that are no longer there.
But no bookstore experience has been like the thrill of walking in and seeing my own book on the shelves or a table or in the window. It was as exciting as my first steps on a professional stage, as my first night on Broadway. It never gets old and it is only made better by meeting a clerk or cashier who has read the book and liked it. No one besides librarians and book reviewers reads as many books or knows as much about them. A thumbs up from someone who works at a bookstore is high praise.
To the right you’ll see buttons to take you to my local bookstore Vroman’s in Pasadena, the Indie Bound site which can link you to your local store, Powell’s which has featured my work on its site and served the Pacific Northwest for years and years, and of course Amazon which, while demonized by many, serves as a local store for lots and lots of people who don’t live anywhere near a local store.
And don’t forget the stores in airports like BookLink in Boston. They’re fun to browse in when you’ve got a layover and while ebooks are nice, you don’t have to turn a hardback or paperback off during take-off and landing!
Many thanks to Emma Roberts, The Spartansberg Herald, Jeannette Walls, Oprah Magazine, NPR Books and others who’ve included Chanel Bonfire on their summer reading lists! I am just finishing Cloud Atlas and about to dig into “Where the Peacocks Sing” by Alison Singh Gee, “The Rules of Inheritance” by Claire Bidwell Smith and Amor Towles’s novella “Eve In Hollywood”. Happy Reading, Everyone!
This wonderful book group of book groups, Literary Affairs has invited me to come speak, read, sign books and talk to readers at the Hotel Bel Air on July 8th. I hope anyone in Southern California will come by. It’s a beautiful spot that feels like you’re out in the country despite its central location. And the food is wonderful. Use the link below to learn more and get tickets. Hope to see you there!
The days were long but our time was short with Daddy in the summers. The memories are just flashes now–moments, expressions, feelings, sounds and colors captured in my mind like this old square format Kodak print.
Some times when we’d go to Minneapolis to see our dad, he’d take us to Canada to spend time with our cousins, uncles, aunts and grandparents in Ontario. Uncle Chuck lived on a house on stilts over the St. Lawrence river. He was a lot of fun in the summers. You could fish through a hole cut in the basement floor over the river.
