By Leslie Lindsay
A curated newsletter on the literary life, featuring ‘4 questions,’ reading & listening recommendations, where to submit, more
Leslie Lindsay|Always with a Book
~MUSINGS & MEANDERINGS~
Can you recommend a book?
People know I read. A lot. People know I write. And so they are often very well-meaning when they ask or comment on one of the two following:
1- You should read:
2- Can you recommend any good books?
I want to be the best literary person in that moment, but guess what? I’m not. Sure, I’m smile and nod and listen and say all the right things, but inside I am <<SCREAMING>>. And here’s why:
What I should read is almost like asking a chore. Trust me when I say I have a precarious titling pile of #TBR books at home. It’s out of control. They are stacked in the kitchen, the living room, on my desk as I type this, on the bonus desk in the corner, on the dining room table. It’s a lot, these glorious books. And I do love them. So much. When I get a suggestion for yet another little gem to add to my already sparkly pile, it’s just too much. So I smile and thank the person for the recommendation.
The other thing I do is turn the question around…
“Oh, why did you love that book so much?”
Usually, the person just wants to talk about the book they loved so much. Sometimes I can get a little craft talk in. Was it the character or setting you loved? The plot or pacing? What did you love about it? If they are articulate enough to sell me on the book, sometimes, I go for it. Other times, it’s just a way to engage in conversation. By listening carefully, dear writer, you can apply what they liked about the book to your own writing.
Another form of this question goes like this:
“I want to read more but I don’t know what to read. Can you recommend something?”
Oh can I ever! But here’s the thing: recommending a book is a bit like recommending your favorite food and promising the other person is going to looooove it. What if they don’t eat steak?
Often, I stare at them with a deer-in-the-headlights look. They are silently thinking: this woman reads and writes all day and yet she can’t offer me a book to read?!
Yep.
Here’s why:
I don’t know your reading tastes unless we are good friends. Really good friends. Do you like commercial, quiet, memoir, nonfiction, historical, biography, mystery, thriller, classics, literary, poetry…what?! There’s something like a living library in my head at any one time and I can’t possibly flip through the card catalogue in 8 seconds and whip out a book you’re going to love.
What I do:
I recently read [title of book] and loved it, but it’s not for everyone.
My last favorite read was [title of book].
A very popular book right now is [title of book].
So that’s it. Also? Sometimes I don’t want to talk reading and writing with people on social level. It would be like if I were an insurance salesperson. I don’t want to talk about premiums or deductibles or that of thing.
This is the good part!
Action Item:
Can you recommend a book to a friend? Try it and see if they agree. Let me know what happens.
Respond here in a comment, or find me on Instagram, Twitter, or Facebook.
xx,
~Leslie : )
This issue of Musings & Meanderings is jam-packed with some really great stuff to get your [writing and reading] off on the right foot. Coaching, book recommendations, journals to submit to, reading recommendations, author interviews, recently published prose, and a quick 4 questions insights interview with Sheila Sundar about her new fiction, HABITATIONS, about writing and publishing (April 2 2024). I have a new author conversation in Hippocampus Magazine, plus poetry in Ballast, Neologism Poetry Journal, Empyrean, photography in Western Michigan Review, and a photo-essay featuring miniatures in On the Seawall.
Musings & Meanderings is a labor of love. Lately, it’s been more labor than love. I’m going to try just one per month in order to focus on my own work. Find me on IG and Twitter, where you’ll find recently-published interviews, essays, photography, and poetry.
There’s more to this newsletter. Keep Scrolling.
By the way, I do not get any ‘kick-backs’ or other kind of payment (in-kind, or otherwise) for mentioning these classes/workshops/books/individuals. Sharing because if helps me, maybe it’ll speak to you, too.
Three Writerly Things:
- What’s REALLY behind the rejections? Did you get a form rejection, a form rejection-plus, something else? Becky Tuch demystifies and spells it out in her LitMag News from March 2024.
- Ever been to a writing retreat? Was it everything you dreamed of, or maybe something more…toxic? Challenging? Did you get something out of it anyway? Andromeda Romano-Lax breaks down the various types of retreats and more in this piece, which ran in Jane Friedman’s newsletter.
- Workshops and Conferences are a great way to hone your craft, meet likeminded folks, inject a little inspiration into your work, and so much more. This one, The Midwest Writer’s Conference is right around the corner–July 11-13 in Indiana–and VIRTUAL! Check it out.
New! Featured Author|Insights
Sheila Sundar
A young academic moves from India to the United States, where she navigates first love, a green card marriage, single motherhood, and more in this “delightful novel, written with immediacy, warmth, and wry humor”
—Ha Jin, National Book Award-winning author of Waiting
Leslie Lindsay:
What would you HABITATIONS is about?
Sheila Sundar:
In terms of plot, HABITATIONS is about a young sociologist who moves from India to the United States for graduate school, and spends the next decade and a half trying to find the meaning of home. More substantively, it’s about the people we meet along the way, the way our initial impressions are flipped—over and over again—and the ways in which those we thought of as minor characters actually shape the trajectory of our lives. It’s also a novel about grief, family, womanhood, motherhood, and desire.
Leslie Lindsay:
Where did you write HABITATIONS? Do you have any special writing routines or rituals? Do they change with each project, or remain constant over time?
Sheila Sundar:
I wrote much of HABITATIONS during the pandemic. For the first year of the novel’s life, I was writing it while overseeing my kids’ virtual learning. They were in 2nd, 4th, and 6th grades at the time; they sat with their computers in the kitchen and was in the next room—on the living room couch.
My writing rituals change with each project, and also with the demands of life. During the pandemic, of course, my rituals were shaped by very particular circumstances. I knew the hours in each day when I could write (because those were the hours when all three kids were in “class”, and I took those hours seriously). But my rhythm was set by my kids.
I’m now a professor at the University of Mississippi, and I spend ten hours a week commuting between Oxford, MS and my home in New Orleans, which is to say that I have to work hard to protect my writing time. I always have one day a week when I think about nothing but my writing. I clear that day completely—no meetings, no grading of papers or planning of classes. I go to an early morning yoga class (5:30 am) then write until I have absolutely nothing left to say.
One ritual that I protect is to spend a lot of time thinking about my writing even when I am not doing it. I walk a lot because I love to, and I drive a lot because I have to. I spend much of that time daydreaming about characters, talking to myself in their voices, and holding imaginary conversations between them. This way, when I sit at my notebook or computer, I feel loose and warmed up. I’m already in the world of my book.
Leslie Lindsay:
If you weren’t writing, you would be…
Sheila Sundar:
Gosh, I don’t know. I’ve never been someone with a very hobby-rich life. Before writing became my job, it was my hobby, and I devoted every spare minute to learning how to actually become a writer. I feel enormously lucky that this has become my job, and I’m still wary of taking on too much to distract myself from it.
Outside of teaching, my non-writing life is focused almost entirely on people. I spend a lot of time with my husband when I can, and I make a lot of time for friends. Otherwise, I’m with my kids or involved in the demands of domestic life: laundry, cooking, cleaning, driving to and from sports practices and games. That isn’t intensely interesting, but there is an emotional world packed inside of it, and this is the world that my writing explores: the physical and emotional exhaustion of caretaking, the complex and mundane nature of love, the small joys and losses that make up our lives.
Leslie Lindsay:
What book did you read recently that you can’t stop thinking about?
Sheila Sundar:
Two books have been on my mind lately: Colm Toibin’s Brooklyn and Madhuri Vijay’s The Far Field. They are very different novels. Brooklyn is the story of a young, sharp, gritty young woman who moves from Ireland to New York shortly after World War II. The Far Field is a more contemporary novel about a young woman in South India who, in the aftermath of her mother’s death, travels to Kashmir to find a man her mother had known years earlier (and possibly been in love with) in search of answers.
Both struck me for their characters’ sharp observations of the world around them. There is so much beauty and humility that a writer demonstrates when they are able to let their characters really study others—what moves them, what hurts them, what makes them tick. Both of these books are stunning examples.
Habitations is an intimate story of identity, immigration, expectation and desire, and of love lost and found. But it is also a universal story of womanhood, and the ways in which women are forced to navigate multiple loyalties: to family, to community, and to themselves.
For more information, to purchase a copy of HABITATIONS or to connect with the author via social media, please visit her website.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Sheila Sundar is a professor of English and creative writing at the University of Mississippi. Her writing has appeared in The Virginia Quarterly Review, The Massachusetts Review, The Threepenny Review, and elsewhere. She lives in New Orleans with her husband and their three children. Habitations is her debut novel.
Browse my Bookshop.org for more books featured on Musings & Meanderings, and see what I’m reading in 2024…and more!
Three Readerly Things:
- Ching Ching Tan’s essay, “How Do I Explain Myself,” (originally published in NER) was nominated for a Pushcart Prize and it’s so, so good. Read an excerpt HERE for free, or purchase a discounted copy to keep reading.
- THE GREAT GATSBY (among others) recognized as The Atlantic’s ‘Best American Novels.’ Check out the list and learn more of the history of this moniker.
- Beautiful poem by Grady Chambers about summer, which will definitely give you all the feels.
What books or essays you’ve read and enjoyed or felt energized by lately? Is there a book you’ve been consistently recommending? If nothing comes to mind, can you make a plan to pop by your local bookstore for a second? I promise, you will find something. You can respond in the comments or shoot me an email or connect on IG.
Recently Published Interviews, Prose, Etc.:
- Susannah Kennedy, author of READING JANE: A DAUGHTER’S MEMOIR (Sibylline Press, September 2023) and I chat about the archives we’ve read, carried, and made sense of after our mothers died by suicide, but we also discuss so many others in this February 2024 interview in Hippocampus Magazine.
- Identity and closed adoptions, plus a thirty-year journey to publication, Susan Kiyo Ito and I discuss her award-winning memoir, I WOULD MEET YOU ANYWHERE (Mad Creek Press, 2023) in the January issue of Hippocampus Magazine.
- Such an important and affirming interview with the lovely award-winning journalist Meg Kissinger about her recently-released memoir, WHILE YOU WERE OUT (September 2023, Celadon Books), about a large family with mentally unstable parents, a family plagued by suicide, plus a plea to improve housing for mentally ill. In the November 2023 issue of Hippocampus Magazine.
Click HERE for more of my published writing.
There’s more to this newsletter. Keep scrolling.
What’s Obsessing Me:
- Genealogy and family history. Old photos, census records, old neighborhoods. Basically: archives.
- A trip to Kentucky, where my ancestors lived, farmed, and made a home from 1804 through 1920, specifically, but branches of the family still remain there.
- This interview with Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore and her book, TOUCHING THE ART (Softskull Press, November 2023)
Much of writing is made up of obsessions. We might use our obsession as catalyst, something that gets us writing and, if lucky, keeps us writing.
Sometimes we write about our obsession directly, hoping (perhaps futilely) to be purged free of it, once and for all.
Susan Sontag, while talking about writing and the writer’s life, said it simply:
“You have to be obsessed. It’s not something you’d want to be—it’s rather something you couldn’t help but be.”
What subjects do you keep returning to—from harmless infatuations to downright obsessions? Is it a piece of art of music? Why are you (okay, me) so obsessed with houses and homes? Old photographs? Paper and erasers and pencils? Basset hounds? Postcards? Old letters? Miniatures? I mean, really….the list could go on and on.
Until next time, happy writing & reading.
Sneak Peek: In July, I’ll be featuring Lauren Az Green’s debut, ALICE
You are reading Musings & Meanderings, a consistently inconsistent weekly newsletter about the literary life from Leslie Lindsay, and home of an archive of bestselling and debut author interviews. I’m also on twitter and instagram. I try to answer comments as best I can. Feel free to find my book suggestions on bookshop.org, and also check out the authors I’ve hosted in in-depth interviews HERE.
In the meantime, catch me on:
Reviewing books and talking about them with others on-line and in-person is one small way to engage with & support the literary community.
Thank you for letting me guide you on your bookish journey.
What I’m Listening to:
In this 50-minute BOMB Magazine podcast (Fuse) with Maggie Nelson, she talks to about how to capture magic in adult life, balancing doubt and trust, and Maggie’s first experience writing about art.
Get the book HERE
Let’s walk this bookish path together.
THANK YOU!!
Some of you have been reading my reviews, interviews, and meanderings for more than a decade now. That’s huge and I am so humbled. Thanks for being here.
More than 2,800 folks read Musings & Meanderings.
Created by Leslie Lindsay. I’m a proud book nerd. Connect with me on Instagram, and Twitter. See what I’m reading on Bookshop.org. Find my reviews on GoodReads. I’m also a Zibby Books Ambassador.
Learn more HERE.
Are you following us on Instagram?
That’s where you’ll catch bookreels, cover reveals, & bookmail : )
Wishing you all the best this spring
Find me on Instagram for this exclusive content: @leslielindsay1| #booknerd
I support writing organizations, authors, publishers, and more. Occasionally, you’ll get a peak behind-the-scenes, too.
Get occasional bookish news delivered to your inbox.
One last thing: I love Between the Covers podcast with David Naimon. Not listening yet? If you’re a serious reader and writer, I don’t think you’ll regret it.
Leslie A. Lindsay 
Got something to say? Tell us!!