Five Books I Wish I'd Written... Sort of - Kristin Rae

I've been a bad blogger lately! But I've been otherwise preoccupied with THE BOOK LAUNCH! My BOOK (Wish You Were Italian) is actually OUT (as of May 6th) in BOOKSTORES (real ones!) on their SHELVES!

 

My box of author copies!

The pretty gelato colored spines! (Simultaneous hardback and paperback release)

L: Me with fellow Bloomsbury gals Lindsey Leavitt and Emery Lord

R: Mom spotting an early copy at BN

Okay, now that I've flailed! Books I wish I'd written.... 

As some of the other authors here have said, it's important that we all have our own style. Something to set us apart from the next. But of course there are going to be books that I read that make me feel like I can never create something that makes me feel this way, or that's so beautifully written, or or or or the list goes on. Here are a few books that made me both want to work to better myself at the craft of writing, and to quit altogether. 

The Art of Racing in the Rain is one of the most cleverly brilliant and emotional stories I've ever read. All from the perspective of a dog. Ripped my heart out. Some favorite lines: 

"It's frustrating for me to be unable to speak. To feel that I have so much to say, so many ways I can help, but I'm locked in a sound-proof box, a game show isolation booth from which I can see out and I can hear what's going on, but they never turn on my microphone and they never let me out."

"I tried to eat slowly, savoring each bite, but I was too hungry and swallowed them so quickly I barely got to tatse them. What a shame to waste something so wonderful on a dog. Sometimes I hate what I am so much." 

Clockwork Princess. This WORLD and the CHARACTERS. This book destroyed me. I'm simultaneously foaming at the mouth to write a fantasy and too petrified to even start.

Maggie Stiefvater has this way of seeing the world, then translating that into a lovely arrangement of words. Her sentences are so striking, I still remember exactly where I was when I read the first page of Shiver (in my car, waiting for my piano lesson). 

Sometimes after we read a book, we say the most ghastly thing: "I want to crawl inside this author's brain!" Disgusting. But oh to be inside A.G. Howard's brain. The beautiful beautiful way her writing sucks you in to this imaginative world. I devoured this book (and the second one). 

Sarah Addison Allen was my introduction to magical realism. How exactly do you define magical realism, you may ask? This book is the definition. Before reading The Sugar Queen, I thought books had limits. Now I don't.