Readers on Reading Launches Today
With Cardiff architect and former NASA astrophysicist Miranda Dettwyler
But first… Meet Me in Llanwit Major?
Before I launch my new Readers on Reading series, let me first mention my upcoming event — and with the election in the USA too close to call, the timing feels like it couldn’t be much better.
So come along this Saturday 2 November when I am joined by writers Sophie Buchaillard and Özgür Uyanik — also ex-pat writers based in Wales, from France and Türkiye respectively — hosted at St. Illtud’s Church by the bookstore by the sea, Bardic Vintage Books in Llanwit Major. I’m paging through my fellow writers’ most recent books again, Assimilation and Men Alone, fascinated by their stories, and loving our initial exchanges of ideas for our discussion… I certainly can’t wait to hear what they have to say. Book now for the Saturday 2 November event at 6:30 p.m.
The Same Country is also available at these bookstore Web sites.
Readers on Reading: Miranda Dettwyler
As a writer, I’ve always loved interviewing other writers. To me, writing about writers (and writing) marries my two sides: journalist and fiction writer. And I always find out something new, something inspiring, and sometimes, I think, I ask a question whose answer surprises the authors themselves.
But since my novel came out, I’ve had more conversation with readers, and I have become fascinated with people who love to read for reading’s sake. I adore reading, and yet I cannot take off my writer’s hat, anymore, when I read — can I say honestly that I’m reading purely for the sake of it? Yes and no.
So what about readers who don’t write? Versions of “Writers on Writing” abound. I want to hear about Readers on Reading.
And so, fellow American ex-pat Miranda Dettwyler, who was kind enough to suggest The Same Country to her book group, has also agreed to be my first guest for Readers on Reading.
Miranda is a Cardiff resident, architect, mother of two, and ardent book lover. Earlier in life, she was an astrophysicist who studied black holes for NASA — so it’s interesting that now, she prefers reading fiction over non-fiction. Below, she shares some of her favorite books, favorite authors, favorite places to read, and how she practices the art of reading.
Carole: What was the first book that made you feel lost in its world – that made you a reader?
Miranda: Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson. I had just turned nine, and we were living in Mali at the time, so we didn't have a TV and I spent a lot of time bored, waiting while my mom was working. I was sitting on a mattress without sheets, my back against the white-washed mud wall, on the floor of a one-room mud-brick house with sunshine streaming through the doorway - mid-afternoon, a large leafy tree just outside the door making shadows on the earthen ground. My mom was somewhere out in the village measuring kids (she was an anthropologist studying infant and childhood nutrition) and I was reading just for something to do. And then Leslie Burke dies and I was hit with that gut punch of emotion and started sobbing, while still trying to read to find out what would happen next. I was SO sad for Jesse and for Leslie's parents; it was such a powerful moment, when books went from being a time killer to suddenly holding important characters that I deeply cared about.
Carole: Why do you think reading is important to you?
Miranda: With fiction, I get to learn about places and times that are completely foreign to me - I love to travel and reading is just an extension of that. Places I can't get to because they are far away or in the past, I can access through stories.
Carole: Can you name a few favorite writers and/or books – and why they’re favorites?
Miranda:I love Jhumpa Lahiri, because her writing is beautiful and spare and she perfectly captures the essence of being an immigrant - even though I am an American immigrant to Wales rather than an Indian immigrant to the US and you might think those are completely different experiences, but she distills down that universal immigrant narrative perfectly.
I love Steinbeck and Ian McEwan and Barbara Kingsolver and Peter Carey and Claire Keegan, again for their language and their characters. Books with obvious language, those Sunday Times best sellers, the da Vinci Code airplane books, I just can't get into them. It's like eating baby food when there's a Michelin starred menu you could be eating instead. Life's too short for mush. I know that sounds snobby, but I don't mind other people reading them. I just simply don't have the patience for them myself.
I also have a great love of Irish writers, I just mentioned Claire Keegan, but also Eimear McBride and Anna Burns and Maggie O'Farrell. I used to live in Cork, and although I found that very hard - I cannot be poetic in my daily life without becoming exhausted by it, dipping into that lyrical culture now and then really nourishes a homesickness I have for the place.
And I love the old great Russians - Anna Karenina, War and Peace, something long and juicy with a million characters to lose myself in.
Carole: Do you have a favorite place to read?
Miranda: Anywhere. I do my most enjoyable reading in transitory places - on the bus, waiting at the dentist - it feels like stolen time - I could be doom scrolling on my phone, but instead I've suddenly immersed myself in a different world. I also have plenty of good reading spots in my house. I used to dream about having a reading nook and now I have so many good places it's hard to decide where to read - in my leather grown-up reading chair by the fire in the front room, in my huge squashy second-hand chair-and-a-half in the living room with the sunlight streaming in from the garden, up in my loft bedroom in my knock-off Eames chair where the lamp situation is good and bright and there's a place for my cup of tea – Important! – and no one is around to bother me.
Carole: What kind of bookmark do you use?
Miranda: I have lots of official bookmarks, but just the ones that used to come free in book shops or else sentimental ones like the one they gave out at my Grandfather's funeral and the one a friend cross-stitched for me as a child. Have long since lost the friend, but I still have the bookmark! But I also am totally cool with folding down page corners. There is a notion that true book lovers would never dare break a spine or bend a corner, that when they finish a book you cannot even tell they've read it, but I call bullshit. I LOVE books. Quite physically. And I wear them out. And that's ok. That's part of the pleasure of books. A well-loved book with pages coming out is like the Velveteen Rabbit to me - real! I'm currently rereading The French Lieutenant's Woman - a favorite from my teenage years, and the pages are literally falling all over my lap as I read, but I just put them back in. I think this may be the book's last reading and then it will need to be recycled and I'll have to buy another copy if I want to read it again, but I don't mind that. Books wear out. People wear out. That's life. Better to live a great big juicy life and run yourself into the ground, then a timid life where everything remains perfect and untouched. What's the point of existing untouched. I certainly don't want to!
Carole: Name a few new books that you’d like to recommend – ones that you proselytize about.
Miranda: Books I've recently been pushing on people include Small Things Like These by Claire Keegan…
Carole: I’m teaching that this semester. Love!
Miranda: …the Wolf Hall trilogy by Hilary Mantel
Carole: Yes… my lockdown reading…I started again from Wolf Hall. But I’ll stop interrupting.
Miranda: …The Luminaries by Eleanor Catton, The Flight Portfolio by Julie Orringer, A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver... My dad and I often share book recommendations. We enjoy the same sorts of books. I'm currently reading The Shipping News for Book Club and really loving it. I'd always meant to read it but shied away from Annie Proulx - had this idea she was boring - but the book is great and not at all what I was expecting. And it's reminded me that I read a book of her short stories years ago and really liked them. I love a short story. And am a big fan of The New Yorker Fiction podcast where one writer reads another and then discusses the story. It's like listening in on someone else's book club. I think the short story doesn't get enough credit - they can be so emotionally punchy in the way that a novel has a harder time achieving the same thing.
Carole: Hooray to the short story! And thank you to Miranda for sharing her love of reading with other readers.
Whatever book you’ve read recently (including The Same Country!) it’s always helpful to authors if you write a review — on GoodReads, Amazon, or whatever is your favorite books or social media site — or just share a few words on social media.