Promises, promises

Okay , so I promised to tell you what book I chose to settle down with. Well, I have to confess that we didn't sit by the fire at all with a book Sunday night. We watched Seinfeld Season Two on DVD that we got as a Xmas gift! There goes the literary persona I was developing here, shot to heck!

But ...we like Seinfeld and as a writer in training I have to say that I admire to death Jerry's ability to take the smallest episodes of life and put them in a context where you think about them in a new way, or think about them at all. And that child-like view of the world , where everything is new and strange is exactly the quality a writer needs. Dorothea Brande talks about that ...the child view that the creative part of the brain uses, that part of the brain we don't use enough but that great writers tap into. She has great advice on how to develop that non-linear part of oneself.

My book circle meets this afternoon and we will have a new book to read and discuss. Coastliners is on for today and I have been thinking more about the book since I will have to say what I think of it. It occured to me that those affected by the tsunami (apart from the tourists) were "coastliners" and the book does deal with the dependence of these people on the vagaries of the sea. Their attempt to change their fate works for a time but then they are battered again and again by other forces, the last being an oil spill. There should be some good discussion of The Guardian's negative review.