Essential and interesting year-end book lists.
“Mostly I listen to music because of the mood a specific song can evoke, and that’s my goal when I write, too: I want a sentence or paragraph to conjure an emotion for the reader.”
“I could not survive without music – of all kinds – and when it comes to writing, the same is true, which is to say that just as I am compelled to listen, I am compelled to write.”
“One of the stories opens: ‘There’s a short window—a fraction of a life—when everything is exactly right, and if you’re lucky, you never forget that time.’ I’m always heartened when people explore gratitude, which is as worthy as any emotion for attention.”
“HAPPY is a workplace novel, a coming-of-age story, and, like a bag of flour, a multitude container. Following the journey of young cinephile Happy Singh Soni from Punjab to Europe, it’s a story on survival, and the inalienable right to a vivid inner life.”
“After discovering five sets of love letters to my great aunt, Dorle Jarmel Soria, from the 1930s hidden in her apartment after her death, I wrote Master Lovers, a fiction/non-fiction mash-up that imagines these affairs and relays some of the darker stranger associations in Dorle’s life.”
“Americana music has always been a big tent, a loose stylistic category ranging from bluegrass to blues and beyond – jazz, gospel, soul, rock and even world music.”
“As I wrote The River, The Town, a list of songs grew that I listened to sometimes whenever I sat down to finishing the novel.”
“Here is a list of eight songs that appear in Kind Mirrors, Ugly Ghosts, my first fiction book in ten years.”
“I don’t listen to music while I write, but music often finds its way into my writing.”