I’ve been having an interesting e-mail exchange with a reader named Linda R. about how we decide on when to give up on a book we’re reading.

I remember one novel that stayed on my night table for months. Again and again I would pick it up to give it one more try although I found the plot tedious and the prose uninspired. Finally I donated the book to a library book sale.

Quite some time later, during a book discussion at a dinner party, I mentioned my disappointment over this popular book (it was a best-seller, though I should know by now that this often is a guarantee of nothing more than a strong marketing machine at work). A friend, another avid reader, asked how far along I was. “About page fifty,” I said. “Oh,” she said. “The beginning is really, really slow, but it‘s worth it.” Another friend chimed in. “You have to get to page 100,” she said. “Then you won’t be able to put it down.”

This was not the first time I’ve heard that comment about a book. I call it the just-stick-with-it advice. But why didn’t the author begin at page 100? Or why hadn’t an editor recommended tightening the beginning? Why must I have to slog through the first third of a book before becoming engaged?

Linda R. said she was willing to give a book an honest go but there were too many books she wanted to read to spent the time on one that she doesn’t like.

For years I’ve felt a moral obligation to finish any book I began, but no longer. As Linda wrote, life is too short. And there are, indeed, far too many books. When we open to page one, we agree to no contract to read to the final page. The imperative lies with the author who is charged with creating a book that draws the reader in early on, to create an engine of desire that drives the train through the long journey to its destination.

These e-mails with Linda have me thinking about calling it quits in general. Most of us have been raised on the “Never give up,” mantra. The Vince Lombardi school of “Winners never quit and quiters never win,” a philosophy underscored these days as we watch Olympians push beyond imagined barriers and possibilities. They are men and women who serve as object lessons that perseverance - linked with hard work, desires and dreams - does pay off. If we only did what we knew we could do instead of what we imagined might be possible, no barrier would be broken. Of space, or time or mind.

And yet. And yet.

Sometimes the most positive thing we can do is hop off the train. To put down a book that goes no where. To make another choice. To make the hard call to back off from relationships that consistently drain. To step away from friendships that have become abusive. To put down a book that bores.

Sometimes calling it quits is a sign we’ve taken charge of our own time. Our own lives.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 10:33 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Well, the chickens are no longer in that adorable Easter-peeps-fluff stage. Now they are in pre-adolescence, all gawky and full of attitude. They roost on the branches Hillary has threaded through the hen yard wire, chase each other around in what seems like a fowl version of tag, and come running to wrangle over kitchen scraps.

One has chosen me for friendship. Or what passes for it in the poultry world.

A Black Star, she walked up to me the day she arrived, twenty-four hours after being hatched, the only one of twenty-eight not timid or wary. She hasn't stopped coming to me since. When I step into the yard, she rushes over, ignores the melon rind I offer and pushes against my leg. While the rest of the chick-lets mill about and squabble over the peelings, she stands still while I stoke her feathers. She is a handsome creature who, according to the McMurray Hatchery people, will weigh a little over five pounds when full grown. They advertise her as egg-laying machine. They said nothing about any proclivity to bond with an owner. But bond we have, Black Star and I.

Now back in June when they arrived. I swore I was not going to get attached to this batch. In the past, each time I grew fond of a chick - at least fond enough to name her - she was the first to fall prey to a predator. Tina Turner, a Buff Laced Polish with a flowing crown that looked like a rock star's wig, we lost to a fox who managed to get through the wire fence. Lady Day, a Golden Campine as handsome as a partridge, fell victim to a racoon. Ella we lost to a hawk who squeezed through a narrow hole in the wire netting above the yard. Each time I wept. Although I spent most of my childhood on a farm and know the cruelty of nature, I never get used to it.

So when this batch arrived I said, that's it. No more. I'm not setting myself up for loss. And I'm definitely not naming any of them.

And then little Black Star chose me. And as simple as that, I was hooked.

In this complicated world, it is a simple thing to stand in a chicken yard on a summer day and commune with a chicken. And a simple and wondrous thing, too, to open your heart in spite of a history woven with the anguish of loss.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 01:46 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Let the rest of the world keep the golf courses and tennis courts and shopping expeditions, my idea of a perfect summer day is to be sequestered with a good book. A hammock and fat novel and I’m in hog heaven. Add a glass of iced tea and I’ll just roll in the dust, metaphorically speaking.

When I was in high school, each summer break I was required to read and report on eight books chosen from a reading list as lengthy as it was diverse. While this idea may strike some as onerous, to me it was a treat. Even now I can remember some of those books. A TREE GROWS IN BROOKLYN. THE LAST DAYS OF POMPEII. LIFE WITH FATHER. The autobiography of George Washington Carver. THE CHILDREN'S HOUR. SPOON RIVER ANTHOLOGY.

This summer my book stack measures a foot high and is as varied as the high school one.

Among the non-fiction titles are THREE CUPS OF TEA and THE INTENTION EXPERIMENT.

I have my pal Thomas Cook’s new book MASTER OF THE DELTA to look forward to. Judging by the write-up in this past Sunday’s New York Times Book Review, I won’t be disappointed. A bunch of us have been getting Tom’s book tour dispatches and if he ever decides to give up a life of crime and turn to comedy, I’ll be first in line at the book store.

Also in the crime genre is Lee Child’s latest NOTHING TO LOSE. Child is a relatively new discovery for me and I’ve been taking his backlist out from the library all spring.

Usually I’m so put off by hype that a year or two passes before I get around to reading what everyone else has been chatting up for months, but the word of mouth from tons of readers and reviewers and authors I trust for THE STORY OF EDGAR SAWTELLE has been so over the moon that I just bought a copy.

Books that I read earlier in the spring but highly recommend are Ann Hood’s heartbreaking memoir COMFORT, and LOVING FRANK by Nancy Horan, the story of the love affair between Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Borthwick Cheney.

What about you? What’s on your summer reading list these days? What is your most memorable summer read? If you had only one book to take to the hammock, what would it be?

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 01:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Back in the winter, Hillary tried to get me involved in the ordering of the new chicks. I resisted, even when he pulled out the catelog and offered me the opportunity to choose my favorites. I wasn't interested. After ten years of chickens, I'd had enough. They're cute when they arrive, but soon there is the reality of tending them 24/7 year round and finding caretakers for them when we want to go on vacation, not to mention the sorrow when - inevitably - we lose one to a predatator. I was ready to move on to a life beyond the chickens.

Not HIllary. Niight after night, he poured over the Murray McMurray Hatchery catelog, seduced by the variety of breeds. As always he was torn between selecting the proven egg producers like the Rhode Island Reds and the gorgeous plumage of the more exotic breeds like the rare Golden Campines, all black and gold, and the Egyptian Fayoumis and Silver Laced Wyandottes.

"What do you think?" he'd ask.

"I don't care," I'd answer. Though secretly drawn to the Buff Rocks and Campines, I offered no encouragement. Enough was enough.

But a Hen Man is a Hen Man through and through, and, even without enthusiasm on my part, he sent in his order.

The chicks arrived this morning. They're in the smaller hen house, huddled under the heat lamp and I am no longer able to remain unmoved by the miracle of life playing out before me. Earlier, I helped teach them how to drink by picking each one up out of a shipping container no larger than a shoe box and dunking its beak in the water trough. They are weighless as smoke in the palm, but already - one day old - filled with spunk. And even this early, a pecking order is developing. The bossy ones push the meeker aside to get to the water. One adventuresome one chased a bug across the floor. Their antics make me laugh out loud.

If you're in the neighborhood, stop by for a visit. In the midst of the trials and heartbreaks of our days when it seems as if every week comes news of another friend struck by cancer or other illness, not to mention the bleak national reports of war and a tanking economy, it is good to celebrate life in whatever form it comes to us.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 08:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I'm in that first stage of writing a new book when all things are still possible.

A friend asked me if writing a book was like giving birth. The comparison is apt. There is the conception - that first spark of an idea that hits in the middle of the night or in the shower or when I'm out running, followed by a period of gestation as the project grows and develops. And then, eventually, there is the labor of birth and euphoria,followed by - at least for me and for a number of my colleagues - post-partum depression.

"So where are you in the process?" my friend asked. "Have you conceived?"

I told her I was still dating. Right now I'm in the back seat of the Chevy making out and steaming up the windows. The hard work lies ahead.

In an exchange with one of my students from last year's Maui Writers Conference, I mentioned that non-writers
couldn't possible know how difficult writing a novel is. "Yeah," Alan e-mailed back, "but they don't know how exciting and gratifying it can be either."

Or how alive you feel when passionately in love with a story and the characters who people it. I'll let you know when I crawl out of that back seat and start driving the Chevy down the road.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 10:05 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

In an interview, someone, I think it was either Carol Shield or Margaret Atwood, once summed up her life by saying that when she was writing she didn't have a life and when she had a life she wasn't writing.

Ditto here. When I am in the thick of a novel, I barely floss my teeth never mind tending to concerns of the "real world." (When my daughter was a teenager she told me she thought writers should be hermits.)

But when I finish a project, suddenly - as if I am crawling out of a cave - I blink in the blaze of a life long neglected. My days are filled with little excursions. I buy shoes, lunch with friends, catch the movie everyone in the country but me has seen. I fill with nesting energy. I furiously clean closets and kitchen cabinets. I put order back into the life I have reclaimed.

This can go on for days and weeks. Sometimes months. And then one morning, I wake, a cloak of dissatisfaction weighing heavy on my shoulders. I am antsy. Itchy. I have no interest in painting woodwork, or pruning back the hydrangeas, or making one more plan to meet a friend for coffee or a glass of wine. The hunger to be writing consumes me.

Last week I finished the revisions for my new book. SInce then I have cleaned five closets. I have reconnected with friends. I have started the onerous task of clearing out the clutter in my studio and culling my files. I've recommitted to my fitness plan. I'm reading other authors' books and preparing cover blurbs.

The itch hasn't started yet. Stay tuned. It's only a matter of time.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I read in yesterday’s New York Times that the novelist Phyllis Whitney died. She was 104 and, according to the obituary, once said she stayed young by writing. She last published in 1994.

Then last night I went to see “Starting Out in the Evening.” In the film, Frank Langella portrays an elderly novelist whose life is turned upside down by a young grad student. In the final scene, after he is back home following a stroke, we see him setting a cup of tea and plate of toast and jam by his bed. The camera zooms in on the tea and toast, and then it cuts to him at his typewriter pecking out words as he works on his novel.

The coincidence of the two - Langella’s performance as the aging writer and Whitney’s obituary - reminded me of a project my friend Kelly Morgan was working on years ago concerning the correlation between creativity and longevity. But that’s a subject for another day. It was something else entirely that made me clip out a paragraph from Whitney’s obit and set it on my desk. Here’s what I saved.

“Ms. Whitney ascribed her success as a writer to persistence and an abiding faith in her abilities. ‘Never mind the rejections, the discouragement, the voices of ridicule (there can be those too),’ she wrote in “Guide to Fiction and Writing.” ‘Work and wait and learn, and that train will come by. If you give up, you’ll never have a chance to climb aboard.’”

Sound advice, I think, and not just for writers. Work and wait and learn. And continue to show up at the station.

Posted by Anne LeClaire at 02:24 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)