Book Swap - October

After the crepes, first up was the artist Dawn Csutorus from Melbourne, Australia.

Dawn loves color and space (hence her choice of The Poetics of Space by Gaston Bachelord) citing Monet and Van Gogh as influences earlier on, and now Rothko, as well as Taoism, saying her paintings are "meditations."

Dawn also donated Bill Bryson's Down Under to represent where she's from.

Next up was the writer and TV producer Barrie Brett from New York.

Barrie brought her inspirational book Moments of Being, which is about finding your own moment, "a pivotal moment that transformed a life."

With the same idea in mind Barrie also brought along Thornton Wilder's The Bridge of San Luis Rey, a book she has loved since she was a child,  about five people on a bridge at the same moment.

Barrie also donated Rupert Wright's Notes from the Languedoc.

The Australian artist, also from Melbourne, Mia Rappel, was next.

Goatperson and other Tales by Michael Leunig was Mia's first book. She calls Leunig an "Australian treasure, a cartoonist who's really a poet, gentle and tender."

The book about where she's from is Mirka Mora's My life: Wicked But Virtuous. Mia's family came from Europe to Australia, as did Mora's, a Romanian Jew from France, or as Mia puts it "she brought Europe to Australia, the old country to a young land."

Then came Irish writer and calligrapher Karen Powell.

Karen gave us the book about where she's from first, Arthur's Round, by Patrick Guinness, a descendant of Arthur Guinness, the founder of Guinness breweries. Guinness "was first brewed in my village in 1755 and we're still hoping for a tap!"

The book that inspires Karen is Brendan Behan's The Complete Plays, "The Hostage" being her favorite. Karen loves Behan not only because he "made human choices" but because "he gets people."

The American poet Nancy Collins-Warner donated her books next.

Finding Chief Kamiaki: The Life and Legacy of a Northwest Patriot  is "about the place I was raised in the Palouse, an Indian word for 'the place', a very feminine, fertile land."

The book Nancy donated  that inspires her was W.S. Merwin's The Shadow of Sirius. She calls Merwin "a master of the essential."

Next up was the English writer Maxine Backus from Zurich.

Maxine donated The Metaphysical Poets edited by Helen Gardner as she loves the "switch of register of the poems." Maxine also donated two of her own collections of poems "Zurich Observed" and "To Learn to Pleasure Yourself."

Last up was the New York writer Sarah Deming.

The "transgressive" book about where she's from is by New York writer Jonathan Ames: What's Not to Love: The Adventures of a Mildly Perverted Young Writer.

The book that inspires Sarah is Dictionary of the Khazars: A Lexicon Novel in 100,000 Words by the Serbian writer Milorad Pavić who just died last year. Sarah says the book is "magical" and probably "the favorite book I've ever read."

Thanks again to everyone for all the great books!

August Book Swap

After the crepes came... the books:

The Belgian writer and doctor Alain Brichau brought Narrative Design by Madison Smartt Bell. Alain attended a workshop by Smartt Bell 11 years ago and says the book has "great ideas on the process of writing" and channeling what Smartt Bell calls "the creative black box."

Alain's second choice Le Chant de L'etre et du paraitre, by the Dutch writer Cees Nooteboom, is a novel about a "writer trying to write a new novel" and the "dialogue this writer has with another more cynical, successful writer" who tries to dissuade him from doing so.

Johanna Gohmann was up next. Jo, who is here on a barter fellowship, donated the memoir Are You Somebody? by Nuala O'Faolain because it gives a "sense of where I am now" (Jo is an American living in Ireland) and the fact that she is working on a collection of essays.

Jo also donated a collection of essays in which one of her essays, "The Vagina Dialogues," is included: Best Sex Writing, 2010.

Charles (left) and Lupin Pooter at from Chapter VI of The Diary of a Nobody.

The English writer and actor John Finnemore talked to us about Michael Frayn's "amazing play" Copenhagen and the book he donated Frayn's writings on theatre from 1970 to 2008: Stage Directions.

John's other book was The Diary of A Nobody, a novel set very near the part of London John lives in, about a character who is a "misrepresentation" of who he really is. It is a classic English comic novel written by George Grossmith and his brother Weedon Grossmith with illustrations by Weedon. It first appeared in the magazine Punch in 1888 to 89, and was first printed in book form in 1892.


Our University of Wisconsin Fellow, Sarah Johnson then told us about Alan Hollinghurst's The Line of Beauty. Sarah said the novel she's writing is along the same lines as Hollinghurst's book and Brideshead Revisited in the sense that it is the story "of an outsider who gets involved with a family."

Sarah also donated A Gate at the Stairs by Lorie Moore who taught her at Madison, the story of "a mid-western girl who becomes a nanny" in what Sarah called an Edith Whartonesque way "because of the way it draws a socio-political picture with such a gentle hand."

Thanks again for all the books!

Book Swap

Another retreat started yesterday and here are the great books people donated to our living library after crepes this morning:

Tracy Marchini from New York who is here working on her YA novel donated Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist by Rachel Cohn and David Levithan as it reflects the genre she's working in.

Tracy also donated Gare Thompson's Who Was Eleanor Roosevelt? about her "home town" and the Roosevelt estate.











The Londoner Tanya Byrne was up next with her "desert island books," the first being the "first book I read for school that I really loved": To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee. The novel expressed "racial tension" for the first time for Tanya as a child, as opposed to the "Pride and Prejudice genre of novels I read before it." She especially loves "the strong male role model of Atticus."

Tanya's other selection was Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughter House Five, quoting the first line as one of the best she's every came across.

Next up was Dennis Lewis who lives and teaches in Qatar and is here working on his first collection of poetry. Dennis donated The Triggering Town by the Montana poet Richard Hugo which he called "an honest and very helpful book on writing."

Dennis' other book was W.G. Sebald's The Emigrants, a book he said that repeats many of things from Sebald's other works, "all of his books being a combination of different forms and all of them dealing with memory and loss."








New Zealander Jenny Simpson, who is here working on short stories, gave the library Mister Pip by Lloyd Jones as her first contribution. She describes Jones as a very different writer from other writers in New Zealand as he writes about things set elsewhere.

Jenny's other book was the poet Bill Manhire's most recent work of stories and poems, Lifted. For the 25th anniversary of the Erebus air disaster, Manhire composed the poem "Erebus Voices", which Sir Edmund Hillary read at the commemorative service at Scott Base, Antarctica.

Writer Natalie Mera Ford spoke after Jenny about her book An American Story, a collection of Barack Obama's speeches, reflecting where she's originally from, the US.

Natalie's second choice was The Other Side of the Bridge by the Canadian writer Mary Lawson. Natalie chose Lawson's book because she is working on a novel herself away from her home country.

Last to speak was another London writer, Martha Close, who is here working on a novel much like the first book she donated, Grahame Greene's The Quiet American which she has "kept on her desk while writing my novel based in Cambodia" because of its' "meeting of East and West" but mainly because it is so beautifully written.

Martha's other book was How Not to Write a Novel by Sandra Newman and Howard Mittelmark. She cited specifically page 28's title: Why Your Job is Harder than God."

Thanks again to everyone who donated books!

July Bookswap

A new retreat started a few days ago, which means a new slew of books from new residents were donated today.

After we had crepes and homemade dandelion, apricot and fig jams (as well as Kerry's homemade cherry compote!) the writer Sheryl St. Germain donated some of her own books first, talking about the artists who designed the cool covers: Let It Be a Dark Roux (by artist Francis Pavy), The Journals of Scheherazade, and Swamp Songs (by Jacqueline Bishop).

Because she hails from New Orleans Sheryl also brought along Why New Orleans Matters by Tom Piazza, a book "about the world, not just New Orleans," as well as a recent collection of 108 sacred poems, Mala of the Heart, and Sherman Alexi's Face, a writer Sheryl said "writes with a lot of anger and interesting gusto." Sheryl also generously gave the library two books by Paul Guest, One More Theory About Happiness and Notes for My Body Double.

The artist Daphne Leighton talked next, about Israel, a book of photos by Annie Sacerdoti, Meir Shalev's novel The Blue Mountain, and a Sotheby catalogue featuring Israeli art going back to the beginning of the last century.

Daphne also donated two catalogues of her most recent art Images of Thought and unknown familiar land (that's one of her paintings to the left).

Camille Goodison then donated her grandmother's memoir From Harvey River, a book about where she's from, as well as a collection of stories, Creole Folktales, by a writer that inspires her a lot, Patrick Chamoiseau.

Deborah Clarke, an artist from South Africa, who lives in Grenoble and who was here last year too, donated Africa House by Christina Lamb about the Englishman Stewart Gore-Browne because it is "about a house as well as a man" who built it from scratch and helped people in the process even if "the dream turned sour."

On a different note Deborah donated Francis Mayes' Under the Tuscan Sun a book she loves because it emphasizes "a new life in a different country" but also because she "includes recipes" that give you a real feel for the place and the people.

Next up was the Australian Mary Delahunty who is here working on her memoir Public Life, Private Grief. Mary donated Colm Tóibín's Bad Blood because it is "another way of looking at the Troubles" starting in reportage that bleeds into "a beautiful story of a walk along the border." Mary's other book was Chloe Hooper's The Tall Man about her homeland as "an unreconciled country, but also a book about why justice can never be served."

Kathleen Smith, a filmmaker and producer, is also "drawn to the Troubles" as Mary put it, and so gave the library her friend Darren O'Donnell's Social Acupuncture, a book about confronting change, no matter where we are.

Then Kathleen donated "a book about where I grew up, but more because of the universal truths in it," Alice Munro's Dance of The Happy Shades. 

The jewelry designer Toni Freitas came next donating The Vintner's Luck, (she compared it to Marquez's magic realism) a novel by Elizabeth Knox about a guy who meets an angel.

Toni also brought along 1000 Years of Annoying the French, a funny repackaging of history from the same man who wrote A Year in the Merde.

And finally came the writer and designer David Trujillo-Farley's cool children's book This Is Edinburgh by M. Sasek, about the city he and Toni live in.

David's second donation was Ilustrating Children's Books by Martin Salisbury, which "talks about structure, characterization and many other things" that David says are "a lot more useful than many of the pretty books on the subject."

Again, THANK YOU to everyone for the books!

Book Swap - June

June has come and once again the artists-in-residence at La Muse share their artistic goals and inspiration over breakfast. While savoring the crepes prepared by John, and toasts of bread slapped with dandelion jam, we heard from our seven residents: -

Victoria Nechodomu writes fiction and hails from Kasigluk, a Yup’ik village in Alaska. She plans to work on short stories that feature her heartwarming and brilliant teaching experience in Kasigluk and travel stories in China, Mongolia and etc.. The books she brought for La Muse include Qayaqs & Canoes, Native Ways of Knowing presented by the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and Monica Wood’s The Pocket Muse, a picture book with writing prompts.

A daring New Yorker, Jennifer Murray quitted her daytime job as a lawyer to write fiction. She is currently working on the first few chapters of her novel, Mother of Exiles, set during the Nazi occupation of France. Her novel spans different historical periods under the thematic element of escape and exile. She is also working on a short story incorporating Dissociative Fugue, a type of amnesia in which the traveler forgets his/her journey. She brought in Colum McCann’s Let the Great World Spin and The Paris Review Interviews, Volume 1.

Nandi Szabo is a creative arts therapist from Sacramento, California and has been an artist resident at La Muse in the previous year. She dances, paints and writes and is interested in the healing potential of art and a multidisciplinary approach between performance and literature. She is a charming sweetheart, bringing to La Muse her youthful energy and generosity. The books she brought were Soiled Doves, Prostitution in the Early West by Anne Seagraves and The Art of Breathing by Nancy Zi.

Vicki Jean de Kay is also from Sacramento, California and has been a nurse and consultant for the state health department. She loves country dancing and is currently taking art therapy workshops with Nandi. True to her warm and racy sense of humor, she brought in Ladies’ Home Erotica by the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society as well as Where I was From by Joan Didion.

Tiziana Stupia left England for the Himalayas on an inner journey of healing and discovery. She has been a resident since May and is currently in the fourth draft of her book on travel in India and Pakistan. From her fire rituals to meditation practices, she refreshes our idea of an artistic retreat. Her books are Glastonbury, Avalon of the Heart by Dion Fortune and Tantrika, Travelling the Road of Divine Love by Asra Q. Nomani.

Nicholas Wong, a Malaysian poet based in New York City, is here on a barter fellowship to read and write about Cathar history, troubadour verse and Occitan culture. He brought Dialogues in Paradise, a short story collection by Can Xue, China’s heir to magical realism. The other book is Louis Couperus’s The Hidden Force, a novel with its own dose of Malay magic and the scary forces that threaten Dutch imperialism in the East Indies.

Nicole Mayhew, a sculptor and painter from New York City, has been here on barter fellowship since May. Her portraits show the hand of Egon Schiele and Gustav Klimt, and she loves Southern France. The books she brought are Calvin Tomkin’s Off the Wall, a book featuring the New York arts scene in the 80s, significant for uniting the art of painting and sculpting, as well as Jitterbug Perfume by Tom Robbins.

'Some extra, just for you'

The December book swap was good fun. We had lots of crepes and loads of laughs, the heartiest of which came courtesy of current wild-card fellow Kieran Carroll, a playwright and poet from Australia.  Please enjoy Keiran's disembodied head performing Philip Larkin's "This Be the Verse;" we sure did.

November Book Swap

As this session comes to a close, we thought it was high time we shared the November book swap contributions! Roisin Meaney, a novelist and children's book author from Ireland, and Peter, the Pitch Doctor, Rush discuss their picks in their own words below. On an only semi-related note, we'd like to say in advance how much we'll miss Roisin's amazing baked goods and Peter's top-notch dinners. As sorry as we'll be to return to our own devices in the kitchen, at least now we have a chance at once again buttoning our pants.

Roisin on her donations:

Brooklyn by Colm Tóibín evokes rural Ireland of the 1950s, and introduces the reader to Eilis Lacey, a young woman who emigrates reluctantly to New York, more out of a sense of familial duty than a real desire to spread her wings. This simple-sounding story, written from Eilis's viewpoint in Tóibín's usual sparse style nevertheless manages to convey pathos, sharp observation, and humour, while avoiding sentimentality as the heroine moves from Ireland to America, adapting as best she can to her changing circumstances. It's an easy and, in my opinion, rewarding read.   

William Trevor's fourteenth novel Love and Summer is also set in rural Ireland of the mid twentieth century, but there the similarity ends. The 82-year old 'master of quiet, Irish brooding' (the Guardian) has produced a doomed love story of sweetness and poignancy, steeped in end-of-summer sunshine and peopled with subtly drawn and very recognisable characters (recognisable to this Irish reader, at any rate!) Love and Summer will linger in the memory long after the last page has been turned. 

Peter discusses his picks (The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda, A Pathway to Peace by Gerry Adams, and The Big Book) in the video below.

              Follow Peter on Twitter.

The library grows lovelier with each and every book swap, and the bedside to-read stack grows taller, too.  

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).

August Book Swap

So, didn't post this until our most recent August attendee, Alexa Smith, got here with her two books.

Alexa, a fiction writer from San Francisco who lives in Manhattan, brought along Edward P. Jones' debut novel The Known World, as well as Baghdad Burning a blog that was turned into a book by an Iraqi who writes under the pseudonym Riverbend. Once a computer programmer who had lots of personal freedom after Baghdad's fall, Riverbend finds herself out of a job and largely restricted to the safety of her family's house.

Another New Yorker this month, Dean Olsher, donated his book From Square One, a book about what drives 50 million Americans to solve crossword puzzles every week. Dean also gave La Muse Mary Cantwell's collection of memoirs Manhattan Memoir, which includes American Girl, Manhattan, When I was Young and Speaking with Strangers about where he comes from.

Two attendees who were here last year, Toni Frietas and David Trujillo-Farley, also brought along books about where they live. David, who is here editing his novel, brought along The Local's Guide to Edinburgh, a word of mouth travels book, edited by Claudio Monteiro and Owen O'Leary, and Toni donated the tartan noir novel The Sacred Art of Stealing by Christopher Brookmyre.

David also donated Silverthorn by Raymond E. Feist as an example of something like what he's trying to achieve in his work. Toni is working on jewelry this retreat so she also brought along Jewels: A Secret History by Victoria Finlay. Toni also gave La Muse a great book on France and food: Traveling Naturally in France by Dorian Yates.

Another returning attendee, the novelist Robert Olmstead, brought along his great book of short stories River Dogs and his memoir Stay Here With Me. We also brought out Bob's books from last year for the other attendees to read, his novels Coal Black Horse and A Trail of Heart's Blood Wherever I Go and his book on writing Elements of the Writing Craft. Bob is here working on the third novel of the series he started with Coal Black Horse. The second novel of the series, Far Bright Star came out in May.

Eithne Nightingale, who is working on a memoir this retreat and works for the Victoria and Albert Museum in London,

brought along Sulaiman Addonia's first novel The Consequences of Love, a political romance set in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in 1989, and Scottsboro by Ellen Feldman, a fictional account of the Scottsboro case, in which nine black teenagers were accused of raping two white women told through the journalist character Alice Whittier.

Robin Chandler, an artist from Boston who teaches at Northeastern University in Boston, brought along The Papers of African Artists from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian, as well as Impressos do Brasil, the catalogue of an exhibition of fine art Robin was featured in. Robin also donated Rainbow: Prints from Bob Blackburn’s (pictured above) Printmaking Workshop, a cultural presentation curated by Noah Jemisin.

May Book Swap

First off was John Hunter who brought Anne Enright's Booker Prize wining novel The Gathering because it is set in Dublin in the New Ireland of the "economic miracle." John also donated Margaret Atwood's book of essays Negotiating With the Dead: A Writer on Writing. John was here to work on what he said people are now calling "life writing." His biography is about Samuel Smiles.

Next was John's wife Janet who donated I Never Knew That About Ireland by Christopher Winn, a book full of interesting asides on historical characters and places in Ireland. She also brought along Ken Hom's cookbook Ken Hom's Vegetarian Cookery.

Liza Filby who was here on the retreat before this one came next. She reintroduced Kingsley Amis' Lucky Jim and Wynton Marsalis' road trip memoir Jazz in the bittersweet blues of life.

The Irish poet Tadhg Ó Dúshláine donated another of his great books of poetry Mallacht Famaire which he finished last year as well as a copy of some new work tentatively titled "Home and Away" or "Is Abhaile Againn."

Anne Mini, an American author, who has a great blog for writers that you should check out, who was also here last retreat, reintroduced Philip K. Dick's, Valis and F. Scott Fitzgerald's first novel, This Side of Paradise.

Lori Neville, a Canadian writer and artist who lives in California, donated The Virginia Woolf Writers' Workshop: Seven Lessons to Inspire Great Writing. Lori also donated Gary Snyder and Tom Killion's book The High Sierra of California. Killion did the illustrations from woodcuts, in what Lori called "a feast for the eyes" and Snyder wrote the poems and journals. The poet works where Lori works at University of California, Davis.

The South African artist Deborah Clarke, who lives in France, brought a photo memoir of her father JFC Clarke's book A Glimpse Into Marabastad which documents a township in South Africa back in the early 70s.