Back from vacation
Gretchen and I are officially back this week from vacationing in Colorado. What a fabulously relaxing way to spend two weeks! Holidays are perfect for writers, too. One has time to ponder and reflect upon his or her work, away from the computer and familiar societal structures. Under new circumstances, the brain tends to widen with perspective. Novel experiences can pull and tug at old, crusty synapses. Heres and theres have the potential to become moments of epiphany. The whole process of leaving and coming back can be just the elixir a potentially stale book project needs.
Vacation, of course, also allows for the reading of books that have been patiently waiting on the nightstand. Both of us finished our hardcovers during the trip. I read Bike Snob, a systematic and merciless yarn to realign the cycling world by Eben Weiss, aka Bike Snob NYC. The book was laugh-out-loud in spots, with a poignant message too, the mark of good writing for me. I also like the book’s typography, art, and construction. Weiss’s writing and editors are fabulous. You can find out more about the book and order it here. (Thanks to April Streeter at Tree Hugger dot com for the referral).
Gretchen read Rebecca Skloot’s The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks, the amazing tale of Henrietta Lacks, a poor African American migrant from the tobacco farms of Virginia (who died from a cruelly aggressive cancer at the age of 30 in 1951), and her immortal HeLa cells, which made some of the most crucial innovations in modern science possible. Based on Gretchen’s reaction to the text, I can’t wait to dig in. You can find out more about the book here. (Thanks to NPR for the referral).
This break wasn’t all vacation (and never is for freelancers, to be brutally honest). Both Gretchen and I had more than one book project to work on the first week we were away, and we pick up on those and more projects this week. No rest for the weary! ~Henry
