Stepping Books and Book Pairings
Book Reading Experiences
This summer, I read with a hunger, devouring fiction, non-fiction, classics, and new novels. It helps that I have a free public library in the same small city block where I live. I can pull from the shelves on a whim, take a stack home, and see what clicks. I also listen to audiobooks through the library at 1.75x speed while creating visual art or cooking.
I’ve pondered how rich my life has felt with this summer’s reading experience. This led me to some observations.
Stepping Books
Some books organically lead to other books. They’re like stepping stones over the creek, a little footpath in flowing water, barely visible, sometimes wobbly, sometimes a landing you must share (with frogs and turtles). It’s fun. It feels like progress, like learning, when you step from book to book.
Stepping Books can be discovering an author you like, then reading their backlist, finding a whole genre or sub-category to explore, or being curious about a topic and following from the for-dummies overviews down to niche details. It’s a natural path to take through reading.
Book Pairings
Reading a diverse assortment of books that span subjects and genres, one after another, can create a unique experience where reading one book can illuminate an aspect of reading another book that is a surprise, not intended by the author of either. This is like pairings of food and drink, like certain wines with specific cheeses, beer and pretzels, coffee and cake. Each item is tasty by itself, but pair them together and there is a richer, fuller, new taste of the combination.
I’ve never seen this mentioned, but the impulse to read the full backlist of a new-to-you author might not only be because you like the way they write but because the books will likely pair well together. This is obvious for a series, of course. But, stand-alones, too, can speak to each other and tell their story in relationship to the others. The more you read, the more nuances you see, the way the writer writes, the filter on their glasses that carry through their work. They have the same aesthetic and inhabit a common universe.
Here are a few of the books I read this summer with notes on their stepping and pairings.
A Book Pairing
The more I read about the craft of writing, the more I realize I hop from “expert” to “expert,” just looking for a new way to see what my intuition already knows. Someday, I will stop and trust what I know inside. For now, I need to hear an audible click in my head, the aha moment that some books on storytelling offer. That moment comes about when I hear a fresh analogy or an expression so correct that my soul recognizes it as truth.
Lynda Barry is currently a big clicker of aha moments for me. Wow. Her two non-fiction books, What it Is and Syllabus, are not about how to make money in the arts, how to finish your novel, or how to paint a masterpiece. They are about recapturing the playfulness of creativity that children inherently know. They are about pondering questions that have no answers but lead you to understanding your creative work. They include practical exercises that will bring your unique truths to the surface of the paper. They get you to start “noticing what you’re noticing,” and in so doing, suddenly, you are seeing, hearing, remembering, writing, and drawing intriguing, illuminated moments.
The two books cover much of the same ground, with Syllabus more image-drawing-focused and What it Is more writing-focused. I highly recommend getting them both if you can. I never would have guessed drawing a 30-second comic of a tall man taking fish out of a freezer in the supermarket would improve my writing, yet it has. The more I see, the more I can help my readers see.
I discovered a perfect and unexpected pairing to these two Lynda Barry books, in The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros. I happened to be reading Mango Street (see below) while working exercises through the Barry books. An exercise in the Barry books is to take a noun like car, then quickly list your first ten car memories. This is followed by choosing one of the ten and expanding it, via prompts, into an 8-minute story of a particular car memory.
Having done this several times for various nouns, I now starkly saw the nouns of The House on Mango Street come bubbling up from the page. (Houses, hair, friends, a good day, stores, boys, strangers, adults, feet, lunch, shoes, hips, games, jobs, relatives, trees, wishes, secret places.) I wondered what I would write if I used these Mango Street nouns and followed the Barry exercises. I did a few, and then, more importantly, as I’m not Sandra Cisneros, I realized I could take the unique noun words of my work in progress and do the Barry exercises on them. The result has been a new energy and focus for my revision, as I can choose a subject that needs more emphasis or clarity and discover new depths to share.
Stepping Books Example
For more than a year, I’ve been stepping books as I search for a non-conventional narrative structure and a clear view of the protagonist’s arc for my work in progress.
Researching uncommon book structures led me to Meander, Spiral, Explode by Jane Alison. This is an excellent question-authority lesson on understanding that every novel doesn’t have to be written in three rollercoaster acts. Several award winning novels are analyzed by Alison, including The House on Mango Street. And then several writers on Substack, including Junot Diaz, recommended The House on Mango Street. This is how stepping books leads to perfect book pairings.
Meanwhile, knowing my main character didn’t fit the Hero’s Journey led me to The Virgin’s Promise by Kim Hudson, The Heroine’s Journey by Maureen Murdock and then all things Jung and archetypes. This led me, this summer, to the author Sharon Blackie, who understands archetypes as well as story-telling in the ancient Celtic tradition. I listened to these three books of hers, Hagitude, The Enchanted Life, and If Women Rose Rooted, in a span of ten days via my library’s Hoopla account. Again, like the Barry books, I found myself refreshed and observing more of my physical world. Blackie also brings an acceptance of enchantment, of truths that are ancient, that we know in our souls and are waiting patiently for us. I find it much easier to relate to her archetypes based on Celtic women like my ancestors than the more popular gods of Greek and Roman Mythology. Ditto, in my opinion, her take on The Heroine’s Journey rings more true to the feminine experience than what is portrayed in The Virgin’s Promise by Kim Hudson.
Summing it Up
Noticing what I’m noticing has generated in me such an enriching, creative experience. I feel like a child doing what I’m compelled to do, writing and drawing, placing colors and textures next to each other, conversing with all around me, animate and inanimate, all not as chores or work or Art, but as instinct and play.
How about you? What are you reading, and how did you get there?
Books and authors mentioned:
Non-Fiction
Syllabus by Lynda Barry
What It Is by Lynda Barry
Hagitude by Sharon Blackie
The Enchanted Life by Sharon Blackie
If Women Rose Rooted by Sharon Blackie
Meander, Spiral, Explode, Design and Pattern in Narrative by Jane Alison
The Heroine’s Journey, Woman’s Quest for Wholeness, by Maureen Murdock
The Virgin’s Promise, Writing Stories of Feminine Creative, Spiritual and Sexual Awakening by Kim Hudson
Fiction:
The House on Mango Street by Sandra Cisneros
SubStack Authors to Follow
Austin Kleon
Junot Diaz
Sharon Blackie
More Fiction Recently Read and Recommended
The Heaven & Earth Grocery Store: A Novel by James McBride
James: A Novel by Percival Everett
Breakfast at Tiffany’s by Truman Capote
Your free substack subscription inspires me to share my truth. It lets me know I’m not writing into a void (blogging) or to the algorithm (social media). It helps create a community with comments and sharing that in the end, can inspire and support us all. Thank you so much. You are creating a community by subscribing.
This Is Not About is written by Ada Austen, the author of Better Late Than Never, a multicultural second-chance romance set on the beaches and boardwalks of the New Jersey Shore. It is the New Jersey Romance Writers 2021 Golden Leaf Winner - Best Book by NJ Author.
Wonderful post, Ada. I love the idea of Stepping Books, and thanks to you now have a name for how I often find next-reads, which are so often like signposts.