Dear Reader

Dear Reader Column - September 24, 2024

Dear Reader,

Today's guest author, Tasha Alexander's Lady Emily mysteries has been on the New York Times bestsellers list. The daughter of two philosophy professors, she studied English literature and medieval history at the University of Notre Dame. She and her husband, novelist Andrew Grant, live on a ranch in southeastern Wyoming.

Tasha's new book in the Lady Emily series is Death by Misadventure... Lady Emily must solve a string of high stakes accidents while trapped in a lavish villa in the Bavarian Alps.

Contact Tasha via: https://www.tashaalexander.com/contact

You could win one of three copies of Death by Misadventure Send an email with MISADVENTURE on the subject line and your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]

Welcome to the book club Tasha Alexander…

Is there anything better than realizing you're reading one of Those Books? One you know you won't be able to put down, one you know you'll never forget, one your friends will grow tired of being told they have to read. One you know that you'll never be able to read in the same way again.

Books change. It matters where we read them, when we read them, what's happening in our lives at the time. As the always-brilliant David Mitchell says in Number 9 Dream, "A book you finish reading is not the same book it was before you read it."

When I was ten years old, I read Pride and Prejudice for the first time. I loved it, but was utterly flummoxed when Lizzy turned down Darcy's first proposal. A BOY LIKED HER! Did she not understand this rare and mysterious event might never happen again? Sure, he was a little difficult, but he had some qualities (Pemberley) that deserved careful consideration of their own. Lizzy's decision baffled me. Mind you, I never objected to her refusing Mr. Collins.

Since then, I've reread Pride and Prejudice more times than I can count. It's my comfort book equivalent of macaroni and cheese. But as I got older, the way I evaluated the story changed. In college, I rejoiced when Lizzy turned down that arrogant, pretentious twit, Darcy. High time he got what was coming to him. Later, I came to see that neither Lizzy nor Darcy was without significant flaws, and I could understand both of their positions. My emotional reaction to the book altered as my own circumstances and experiences formed the way I think.

In a way, you get a new book with each re-read, but you can't ever recapture the magic of the first time, when the story and the style and the perfectly-crafted sentences took you by surprise. That's an enchantment like no other.

David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas blew me away when I first read it. It pulled me out of a long slog of disappointing reads. I've gone back to it more than once and loved it differently each time. But, boy, how I wish I could experience the magic of falling in love with it all over again. How about you? What one book would you like to read again for the first time?

-- Tasha Alexander

https://www.tashaalexander.com/contact

You could win one of three copies of Death by Misadventure Send an email with MISADVENTURE on the subject line and your preferred shipping address (in case you're a winner) to: [email protected]

* I hope you enjoyed reading today's guest column. Start writing, because your story could be featured in one of Suzanne's daily columns, if you're a winner or Honorable Mention in this year's Write a DearReader contest. Cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries, read all about them at: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - September 17, 2024

Dear Reader,  

Today's guest author Helen Molesworth's career has spanned the global gem and jewelry industry, from roles with leading auction houses to academia. She was a jewelry specialist for ten years at Sotheby's and Christie's in London and Geneva, where she handled sales of global importance, including the private collection of HRH The Princess Margaret. As a gemologist and jewelry historian, she has been professeur d'histoire du bijoux in Geneva, managing director of a gem academy in Hong Kong, and most recently senior jewelry curator at London's Victoria and Albert Museum.

Helen's new book is, Precious: The History and Mystery of Gems Across Time. A renowned jewelry expert recounts her career working with nature's most extraordinary treasures--gemstones--and traces these rare jewels from ancient Egyptian records through the high-stakes auctions of today.

Reach out to Helen via https://www.helenmolesworth.com/contact and please welcome her to the book club. Authors love to hear from readers.

When I was six, I fell in love. Not with a boy, but with an amethyst geode: the most perfect pool of glittering, spiky purple crystals. I was convinced I had discovered an unknown and alternate universe. But before I could properly explore my new love and my new world, my godfather (the bearer of this beautiful thing) had taken it away and hidden it on top of a dry stone wall, out of reach of my desperate little fingers. I was devastated, and as soon as adult backs were turned, I scrambled up after it, pulling the wall down on top of me and breaking my leg. I never saw my amethyst geode again, but I never forgot it. Gems would be become my waking passion.

Forty years later, I find myself intrigued by several themes in life. Discovery and disappointment, two of the greatest highs and hurdles in life; loss and survival, the inevitable struggles that so shape us; but above all, passion and obsession, the highs that drive us through the pleasure and pain. My amethyst geode revealed them all.

To most, passion is considered a calling, and obsession a folly; to find the one is a blessing, to fall foul of the other is a curse. But the line is fine. They both seem a bit like falling in love: it can hit you out of the blue, but once you realise what you have in front of you, you can't stop thinking about it. That is when it starts crystallising into something tangible and magical, and it becomes a choice. Just as we pursue the career, the professional passion of our life, so too love is something that will only last if we really work at it.

They say if you find a hobby you like and spend ten minutes every day practising it, that within a year, you will be better at it than 95% of the rest of the world. Both passion and love are just this--commitments, for something we choose to make a daily, central part of our lives. You may love something or someone, but it's only when you work at it, that it works. Passion and love are the greatest choices we get to make in our lives, even if every now and again you break a leg chasing after them.

-- Helen Molesworth

https://www.helenmolesworth.com/contact

* Have you started writing your entry for this year's Write a DearReader Contest? Celebrating the contest's 20th year, it's an opportunity for your entry to be featured in my column. You'll find all the info about cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries. Read all about it at: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - September 11, 2024

Dear Reader,

It's time for this month’s Penguin Classics!  

I have a copy of this month's Penguin Classics book up for grabs for one lucky reader, so be sure to Start reading this month's title, Orlando by Virginia Woolf and enter to win your own copy.

(Notes from Penguin Classics:)

A collectible hardcover edition of Virginia Woolf’s pioneering novel about a time-traveling sixteenth-century nobleman who wakes up in the body of a woman, with a new foreword by Andrea Lawlor, author of Paul Takes the Form of a Mortal Girl.

First masculine, then feminine, Orlando is a young sixteenth-century nobleman who gallops through the centuries, from Elizabethan England and imperial Turkey to Virginia Woolf’s own time. Will he find happiness with the exotic Russian Princess Sasha? Or is the dashing explorer Shelmerdine the ideal man? And what form will Orlando take on the journey—a nobleman, traveler, writer? Man or... woman?

Start Reading this month's Penguin Classic and enter to win your own copy.

 

You don’t need to be a writer to enter my annual Write a Dear Reader Contest. The contest is writing for fun. Write about your pet peeve. (Mine is a sticky refrigerator handle. I grab the handle to open the door and Yuck, something is stuck to the back of the handle!)

Write about your pets. I have four cats and they have trained me. They each want to eat when-they-want-to-eat, and of course they each have different tastes…

”Do you want chicken and gravy, salmon, or pate today?” No kidding, I stand there in front of the cat and ask that question! It’s gotten so out of hand I’m considering handing out a menu questionnaire for them each to fill out for the upcoming day.

I’d love to read your entry. Write about anything, but start writing.  To read last year’s winning entries and information about rules, deadlines and cash prizes, go to: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - September 10, 2024

Dear Reader

Today's Guest Author is KL Cerra. As a licensed marriage and family therapist, K. L. uses her writing to explore the complexities--and the darker sides--of relationships. She lives with her husband in a small beach town outside of Los Angeles. When not writing or seeing clients, K. L. is likely walking her Boston terrier or exploring the local botanical gardens.

KL's sophomore novel, Under Her Spell, is a gothic suspense novel following a young woman, Liv, who returns to her small New England hometown to investigate her childhood friend's disappearance. In the process, Liv becomes entangled with her friend's roommates: the witchy owners of a bridal boutique who have their own dark definition of "happily ever after."

Reach out to KL at: [email protected]

Please welcome author KL Cerra to the book club.

 

As a kid, I had a thing for bugs. Not all bugs, mind you--it was the praying mantis that had me enchanted. I doodled praying mantis heads and collected mantis figurines. I spent my weekends camped out in the backyard collecting mantises and "training" them: having them climb up and down my arms (and ignoring the nips of pincers when they inevitably came).

I'm not sure what it was about the praying mantis that got me. Admittedly, there's a certain majesty to that alien-like, triangular head that moves on a swivel, those intense globular eyes. In any case, when Halloween rolled around, I convinced my mother to make me a praying mantis costume, complete with papier-mâché pincers, iridescent wings, and a rather creepy-looking mask featuring our best approximation of a mantis's grasping mouthparts made out of pipe-cleaners. I got some strange looks while trick-or-treating ("Oh! You're...an alien?") but I don't remember being fazed.

Back at home, I'd taped a handwritten sign to my bedroom door: "Entomologist at Work." I decided I wanted to study to become a proper bug-scientist when I grew up. But then, something disturbing happened. As I grew older, my interest faded, as I'm sure often happens to kids formerly into something like dinosaurs or space. I went many years without seeing a praying mantis in the wild. And when I finally spotted one in a courtyard of my college dorm, I was alarmed to feel something akin to...fear.

What had happened to me? I used to scoop these creatures into my hands and let them crawl all over me, and now, as a nineteen-year-old, I was recoiling from the strange-looking insect. It made me sad to think that repugnance had snuck in to replace that sense of wonder: I was afraid of something that had become so unfamiliar. Then again, maybe that just comes with the territory of growing up.

My husband and I are expecting our son in September, and as I write this, I catch myself wondering what it might be like if he were into bugs. Not that I'm excited by the prospect of my kid bringing handfuls of cockroaches into our condo--please, no--but maybe it'd be cool to see insects through a child's eyes again, to relearn how to feel awe instead of reflexively reaching for a fly-swatter. And if he really wanted a papier-mâché roach costume for Halloween...well, I think I could come around to that.

-- KL Cerra

[email protected]

* I hope you enjoyed reading today's guest column. Start writing, because your story could be featured in one of Suzanne's daily columns, if you're a winner or Honorable Mention in this year's Write a DearReader contest. Cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries, read all about them at: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected] 

Dear Reader Column - September 3, 2024

Dear Reader,

Today's special guest, Ava Glass is the author of the espionage series Alias Emma. Ava Glass is a pseudonym for a former crime reporter and civil servant. Her time working for the government introduced her to the world of spies, and she's been fascinated by them ever since. She lives and writes in the south of England.

Ava's new book is The Trap. British spy Emma Makepeace races against the clock to stop the Russians from carrying out a high-profile assassination in this gripping thriller.

Join Ava's book club and win free books on her website: www.AvaGlass.co.uk, or follow her on social media: @AvaGlassBooks

Welcome Ava!

Moving Away

I didn't consciously choose to become an expat, although when I was hired by a London publisher in 1999 and moved to Britain, I joked to my friends that I was an economic migrant. In reality the plan, as I explained to my parents, was to work in London for two years, and then return to the US and settle down.

Although I didn't know it yet, that wasn't going to happen.

I arrived at Heathrow on a cool September morning, and spent two hours at immigration having my visa checked by a kindly older man who never once gave the impression he doubted my paperwork while also keeping me standing at his desk until my feet hurt. When I finally reached the baggage department, my suitcase was making its thousandth solo spin on the luggage carousal and everyone else from my plane was long gone. My adventure had begun.

That afternoon, after depositing my bags at my new place, I walked around my east London neighbourhood for the first time, and fell in love. Over the coming days, I would fall in love with more than that.

I loved my job as an editor and writer, and I adored London, and more than that--I fell madly in love with Britain. I liked its winding one-lane roads, and its soft constant rain, and the way everyone handled a crisis with steady lack of hysteria. As if it would be silly to get excited about something tiny like a bombing or a riot.

Sangfroid is one of my favourite descriptions. It comes from the French: 'sang froid' or 'cool blood.' The British had the cool blood I needed in my life.

I liked the changing of the seasons, from lukewarm summer to chilly autumn, when my feet crunched on a carpet of fallen acorns and golden leaves tangled themselves in my hair. Later, I was fascinated by winter at this northern latitude where the sun set in mid-afternoon and the moon rose at four o'clock.

I had always lived a peripatetic life. My parents moved constantly when I was a child, and as an adult I'd emulated them, living in four states in the five years after I'd graduated from college. Each move was interesting and brought me new friends, but no place ever truly felt like home. In fact, I wasn't certain I knew what home was. Home was an illusion.

England felt like home. Home had found me at last.

-- Ava Glass

www.AvaGlass.co.uk

* I hope you enjoyed reading today's guest column. If you're one of the winners, or your entry is an Honorable Mention in this year's Write a DearReader contest, it will be featured as a guest column. Cash prizes, rules and deadlines, along with last year's winning entries, read all about them at: https://www.dearreader.com/contest2024/index.html

Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.

Suzanne Beecher
[email protected]