October Book Swap

We had crepes again for this book swap along with great creme de marron that Lowell made from the chestnuts he and the other attendees found around the village. It was delicious! We're having another book swap in no time, but first, a quick recap of October's:

Lowell Brower, a writer from Seattle, started us off with Peter Orner's The Second Coming of Mavala Shikongo. The novel is set in Namibia and features some of the finest prose Lowell has ever encountered. For his Pacific Northwest-related donation, Lowell offered Gary Snyder's Earth House Hold, a collection of journals, essays, and poems written in the Northwestern wildnerness.

Elizabeth Ames Staudt donated a copy of Eric Puchner's  Music Through the Floor as it's one of her favorite story collections, and she hopes future guests at La Muse will love it as well. She wonders when Mr. Puchner's next book is coming out--Eric Puchner, if you're reading this, your public awaits! Elizabeth also donated Not Normal, Illinois (ed. Michael Martone). She has yet to explore the anthology, but her novel-in-progress is set in the Midwest, and she hopes the collection will remind her of home, and help affirm that the Midwest is just as lovely and complex and wondrously weird as any other region in the States.

Dwight Cassin, an artist from Chicago, pointed out that non - Midwesterners might not get the clever title. Dwight donated the Journal of Eugene Delacroix first, a book that documents Delacroix's life from 1822 to 1863. Dwight also gave the library Working by Studs Terkel because, he says, Terkel's book tells the stories of real working Chicagoans, interviewed

over forty years for NPR by Terkel. 

Sherry Christie, a writer from Maine, donated a copy of Making Your Company Human: Inspiring Others to Reach Their Potential, a book she co-authored with former CEO Le Harron. She also donated a copy One Man's Meat,  E.B. White's memoir of his time in Maine. Sherry reflected on the wild solitude of Maine and La Muse both. On this, her second visit, Sherry nearly completed a revision of her historical novel Roma Amor: A novel of Caligula's Rome while here. Read more about her book here.

Everyone read passages from their books aloud and we all left breakfast feeling filled with inspiration (and also really, really filled with John's amazing crepes).