Thanks for reading, Karen. I appreciate your words. And I don’t want it to end either : )

Oh, there’s barely an eye-blink between us! As for remembering books, I mostly remember references to food, no kidding. I still long for the hot chocolate and rolls in What Maisie Knew, and that plum cake in the Dubliners story about the poor lady who’s visiting her family on her one day off and leaves the cake on the bus. One day I will make the cake I imagined from Joyce’s description. Mmm….

Your memory about the books you read is way superior to mine… Once I start the next book, the last one is gone. I hate that.

Going to all these conferences was like going to rock concerts. It was so magical to be in the vicinity of these authors whose books I’d read and to hear them read.

And I’d forgotten you were so much younger than me…

Thanks, Beth!

I loved The Grapes of Wrath too, but I had never read East of Eden. I read it at the beach and could not put it down. But I don’t want to spoil it for you!

I kept a list–I kept lists of everything. Cal hates for a light to be on too–but the kindle light is so dim it doesn’t bother him as much–and no noise turning pages : )

Yes! But honestly I have no idea where I found the time. I usually read before bed, but I must have been reading during the day too back then… Which I for sure did at the beach and on vacations. But other than that, I can’t call up any specifics. In later years the more I write, the less I read. It will be the last thing I want to do at the end of a day working with words. Which is sad.

I am enjoying these moments–years that they are–of your life. It is such a good story. Already, I don’t want it to end.
Karen

The May Sarton book is memoir? If you’ve read it that many times I will have to try it. I gobbled East of Eden in high school–I remember I found it so irresistible I would literally hold it open low behind a student’s head but keep my own head high and look up a lot so the teacher wouldn’t guess I was reading. Even then I was really interested in the form of that book–remember the occasional vignettes and brief character sketches he’d sandwich between big sections? Or am I imagining that??

I didn’t know you’d been to a Tin House conference–HAVE YOU DONE EVERYTHING AND MET EVERYONE?? I’m glad to get this chance to hobnob vicariously through these posts…. (Which is truer than I let on–the implication that I would ever do all this people-ing you’ve done, even if I had the opportunity, well, HA. I can ONLY hobnob virtually. So thanks!)

I have to assume you’ve read Into Thin Air? That book has a strange hold on me. I’ve read it 4 times and I can’t figure out why. I finally wrote a story about an ordinary woman claiming Everest and I’m hoping that’s tied it off.

Oh, look, here comes another very attractive number, so many lines AND curves–48!