Jo Boone Reads and Writes

Newsletter #3

Jo Boone Reads:

I belong to a book club that meets monthly. If you’ve ever been a member of a book club, you know that, like a woman trailing a string of failed relationships, they have a “type.” They only read certain “types” of books. Memoir, historical fiction, popular history, occasionally a mainstream historical or literary romance, or a classic novel. Book clubs, in my experience, seldom read science fiction (unless it pretends not to be—for example, Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale) or mystery (unless it hits a mainstream chord, like Gillian Flynn’s Gone Girl), or books that are purely for fun or too academic.

So, it isn’t really suprising that this month’s book club choice is Rough Sleepers by Tracy Kidder. The book is about a doctor who helped create a healthcare program for unhoused people in Boston, and then ran the program for more than thirty years. The program developed a special emphasis on people who sleep outdoors, “rough sleepers.” I’m listening to the audiobook, which is read quite skillfully by the author.

Incidentally, I have spent a couple of months working through the paperback of The Body Keeps the Score, by Bessel van der Kolk. The two books dovetail eerily well. Kidder’s discussions of the types of trauma that drive people to chronic outdoor homelessness and van der Kolk’s discussions of the ways that trauma affects people offer a three-dimensional image of people who often pass through the world unseen, and the net effect for me has been an overflow of compassion. It’s something the world could use more of. I highly recommend both books.

New Releases!

Need something new to read while you wait on The Celestial Sea? Check out these new releases!

Book 1 of Ashes of Entecea by Kacey Ezell. Book 3 of The Sol Saga by James Fox, and The Unspoken Truths of Casemiro by Christopher Clouser.

Jo Boone Writes:

Right now I’m working on a short story in a shared universe (not a Combined Service story). I got 10,000 words into it and my computer decided it looked tasty and ate half of it. I have backups and then backups, and all of them failed. I’m really glad I didn’t lose more! But, I am reconstructing that story. You would think, having written it once, that the second time would go faster. It is not. It will get done, though, and turned in, and then I’ll be on to the next thing!

Remember that The Celestial Sea comes out May 3rd! In it you’ll meet a gu’ul who was on Fortuna after the cataclysm; ride along for Charlie’s disastrous birthday party and even more disastrous first date, and find out whether Chalk finally buys the farm!

Until next time, happy reading and writing!