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This week at The Quivering Pen: A writer's library, the Sunday Sentence, Friday Freebie and more.
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The Quivering Pen

Book evangelism.

The Eclectic Shelf


Novelist Eric Rickstad (The Names of Dead Girls) takes us on a tour of his book collection. Let’s join the tour:

Okay, I don’t really have a library. Not in the sense that I think of a library, that vast room with shelves from floor to ceiling, a place worthy of Colonel Mustard and his pipe wrench. But I do have a lot of bookshelves and cabinets.
 

This is what’s left of what was my Best American Short Stories and O’Henry Awards collection from 1974-2005. I lost so many editions to severe water damage, it kills me. I first read BASS in the early ’90s when in college. These stories opened up my mind to what was possible with words, precise language, and love of craft. Each was a gem that excited me to read more ravenously than ever, and a challenge to write my best. Joyce Carol Oates. Alice Munro. John Edgar Wideman. Harlan Ellison. Alice Adams. Rick Bass. Denis Johnson. And on and on and on. Who were these word conjurers of tales so strange and wondrous and singular? I devoured the stories, and I bought each subsequent edition in the years to come, along with the O’Henry collections. After reading the first copy I ever bought in 1992, I searched for past editions and bought them whenever I was in a used bookshop. Searching for and finding them was a feverish, earnest pursuit. Of course, they led me to the literary magazine world, and I gobbled up every copy of Cimarron Review, Tri-QuarterlyBoulevardPrairie SchoonerPloughshares, and dozens of others in the periodicals section of the University of Vermont’s Bailey Howe Library. There was no going back. The door was flung wide open.

This week’s contest is for the new novel by Wiley Cash, The Last Ballad.  The New York Times bestselling author of A Land More Kind Than Home and This Dark Road to Mercy returns with this eagerly awaited novel set in the Appalachian foothills of North Carolina in 1929 and inspired by actual events. The chronicle of an ordinary woman’s struggle for dignity and her rights in a textile mill, The Last Ballad is a moving tale of courage in the face of oppression and injustice, with the emotional power of Ron Rash’s Serena, Dennis Lehane's The Given Day, and the unforgettable films Norma Rae and Silkwood.


Did you know Brave Deeds is also available as an audiobook? And did you also know that it’s on sale right now for less than $8? If you like your books read to you, then check out Paul Costanzo’s narration of the novel about six soldiers struggling to survive one day of war. It’s unlike any other bedtime story you’ve ever heard...
 

My favorite sentence this week comes from The Minor Outsider by fellow Butte, Montana novelist Ted McDermott. 

If you are on Twitter, please join us on Sundays and share your favorite sentence of the week, using the hashtag #SundaySentence.


 
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