Seven days in the book world with Julia Keller

If you've read Julia's brilliant mystery thriller series you'll know Acker's Gap like the back of your hand. Julia is a native of West Virginia, a graduate of Marshall earned an English literature degree at Ohio State. She won a Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing in 2005 and to quote from her website 'books have furnished, burnished and enabled my life'. She also has an adorable shelter dog named Edward.

Here is Julia's week in her own words.

    It’s a sickness, I tell you. I simply cannot read one book at a time. The habit began in graduate school, when I was forced to juggle at least a dozen hefty tomes simultaneously. Nowadays, the notion of polygamous reading is thoroughly ingrained in my lifestyle. If the tower of books next to my chair hasn’t risen so high that it threatens to topple every second, thereby frightening Edward, my mixed-breed pooch named for Edward Rochester in “Jane Eyre,” it’s a sure sign that I have been ill or out of town, or perhaps had my soul absorbed by alien invaders.

    

Last week, the following books made me a willing captive to their wiles:

 

“David Copperfield” by Charles Dickens. I always have at least one classic novel under way. Last summer was the Summer of Thomas Hardy; this summer, it’s Dickens. I finished the final chapters over the weekend. I thoroughly identified with “the wandering ardour and unsettled purpose” of young Dave.

“Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space” by Janna Levin. Who doesn’t love astrophysics? Levin’s patiently lucid book explains how gravitational waves created by black holes kindle symphonies deep in the universe.

“The Uninvited Guests” by Sadie Jones. I’d never heard of Jones, but saw the paperback at a Barnes and Noble and couldn’t resist the elegant cover. It’s a darkly funny comedy of manners, as the residents of a crumbling British estate in 1912 fend off the ravages of time and social change.

“Angle of Repose” by Wallace Stegner. There are no independent bookstores near my home, so I make do by scouring my local Goodwill store, trusting to happenstance and serendipity to lead me to what I need. That’s where I snatched up (for a thin dime) this Pulitzer Prize-winning novel from 1971, a sprawling, brilliant epic about the settling of the American West. Think Larry McMurtry without the raised eyebrow and the smug wink.

“Against the Fall of Night” by Arthur C. Clarke. Another gem from Goodwill, this is one of Clarke’s early novels (1953). A kid who lives in a safe, settled world decides to risk everything to satisfy his curiosity. It’s the kind of rattling yarn I would have loved when I was twelve years old. Wait—I still do.

“Thin Slices of Anxiety: Observations and Advice to Ease a Worried Mind,” a graphic novel by Catherine LePage. Like a gin and tonic at dusk, this brief, lovely book about frenetic fretting and odious overthinking can help get you through the night.

Julia's week in a nutshell

David Copperfield (1850)

Black Hole Blues and Other Songs from Outer Space (2016)

The Uninvited Guests (2013)

Angle of Repose (1971)

Against the Fall of Night (1953)

Thin Slices of Anxiety: Observations and Advice to East a Worried Mind (2016)

Sorrow Road will be published August 23rd  9781250089588 

Last Ragged Breath is out in paper July 19th  9781250044761

More at http://www.juliakeller.net/juliakeller.net/Home.html