danapop

We aren’t headed to the beach until July, but already I’ve got my warm weather literary list. I’d like to alternate between classic (Gatsby … so excited for this movie remake in 2012!) something that requires a bit more work (Jacob de Zoet), then countered with light (Fey, Handler, and Childress, respectively), a dose of travel envy (The Paris Wife), followed by a page-turner that brings out the feeling of the season (Midnight’s descriptions of a hot, sticky summer in Savannah do the trick), and finally end with a book I should’ve read in college, but skimmed (Papa Hemingway).

I started reading The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo last fall. I was traveling a ton and read a lot then and honestly needed an escape. It came in the form of Lisbeth Salander, the brutally flawed protagonist in Stieg Larsson’s bestselling series. Slow out of the gate (the first 100 pages or so I wasn’t sure what all the fuss was about) but stick with it, it’s worth it, and you’ll be clamoring for the next. I’m not alone, take a look around the terminal on your next flight and I’d bet at least a few people are buried in any one of his three books.

The writing itself, well it isn’t anything made of Jane Austen or even Emily Giffin prose. Not to be all hoity-toity about it, but I find it a bit basic (it could be the English translation), but no one can question Larsson’s ability to develop a thick and page-turning plot.

This isn’t a new story, but what I find even more fascinating than the series is the story behind the writer. Great article in The Times on it here. In short, Larsson died of a heart attack while climbing seven flights of stairs to his office before the books would become wildly successful (actually all three published posthumously). Side note: it’s also incredibly interesting that he apparently insisted on completing all three drafts before attempting to get published. His death occurred within months of the manuscripts being delivered to the publisher. Fascinating, conspiracy theory, you-can’t-make-this-up stuff. It gets deeper, you see, Larson was a Swedish political journalist who received threats often from neo-Nazi’s and far-right extremists because of his work, and he lived his life relatively in hiding. Allegedly not wanting to put her at risk, he never married his partner of more than three decades, architect Eva Gabrielsson.

Gabrielsson supposedly hasn’t received a dime off her late spouse’s estate since common law marriage is not recognized in Sweden. The drama ensues when an allegedly estranged brother and father claimed his computer, and to this day they are fighting over the intellectual property on it (supposedly his fourth book in the series). The computer, however, was left to his partner, but the royalties to his family since a will was never drawn up. Phew, and I thought my family had issues. But, seriously, these books are amazing. The backstory, just as much.

I’ve always been a reader (it sort of goes hand in hand with us writers). As a child, I was certainly the happiest when buried in a book and honestly that hasn’t changed much with age. Since we’re approaching summer months and perhaps I’ll even admit to a little escapism on my part, here are my picks for what to read. Not all of these are newly released titles, but some of my favorites. And truthfully, when you’re in a house rental with your entire family for seven days you won’t care when it came out if you’ve gotten to the point of isolating yourself in a quiet room with a stiff drink reminding yourself serenity now! PS—things would be so much easier if I had a Kindle.

Deborah Copaken Kogan working in Zimbabwe, 1989

I read Shutterbabe the first year I worked at CNN. I was fresh out college with my journalism degree in tow, drowning in a newsroom pool of brilliant minds and it couldn’t have come at a better time–I was an incredibly small fish in a vastly deep pond, struggling to swim. An ex-boyfriend brought the book over, along with a stack of others on our first date. Sounds promising, but I assure you, the book was the best thing out of the relationship.

Since reading it, I’ve likely lost, loaned, or gifted at least 20 copies. It’s just such a great read. I’m beyond thrilled to interview Deborah Copaken Kogan, the author of (among other titles) Shutterbabe.

danapop (dp) How did the idea for Shutterbabe transform into it actually being published? What was your writing process like?

Deborah Copaken Kogan (dck) The whole process, in retrospect, was weirdly easy and lightening fast, especially compared with my second effort, the novel ‘Between Here and April’, whose finished manuscript was rejected 39 times. (While ‘Shutterbabe’ was an instant bestseller, ironically ‘BH&A’ has sold more books over the course of its life, 59,000 to date.)

I took a leave of absence from my job as a producer from Dateline NBC to see if I could actually sit down and write my memoirs of my career as a war photographer from start to finish, something I’d been wanting to do for years. The first day, I went to a coffee shop to sit and think about how to approach it and wound up writing the entire outline, pretty much in its final form, on a napkin. (I then transferred my notes to a small moleskin notebook.) This was back in May of 1998, when my husband and I shared an old desktop computer, so I didn’t have a laptop on which to work. A few weeks of long-hand writing later, realizing I wouldn’t be able to work at home on our one computer—my older kids were 1 and nearly 3, and we lived in a tiny 1 ½ bedroom apartment—I purchased a cheap laptop and started writing at my friend Maia’s apartment on the 3 days a week I had babysitting. (We couldn’t afford to have full-time care once I left Dateline, as my salary, at that point, made up the bulk of our income.)

I wrote the first chapter in a month, and a book proposal within a few weeks of that. I then asked my friend Tad’s then-girlfriend, Courtney, a book editor, to give it a read to see if I was on the right track. She gave me verbal notes while I was on vacation with my family that summer and then provided agent recommendations. I sent the sample chapter and proposal off, via snail mail (remember, this was 1998) to the five agents she suggested. Three came back wanting to represent it, two declined. I picked the agent who seemed the most passionate. She had me edit the first chapter and expand my proposal from 3 pages to 15. She sent it out to publishers, and within days I had a book contract with Villard, who’d made a pre-emptive bid. By that time, my eldest had just started his first year of preschool on the Columbia University campus, so I would drop him off in the morning and write in the Teacher’s College Library, after finagling a library pass from a kind librarian. I wrote three days a week for about a year, then four days, then five—using my advance to pay for extra babysitting—and handed in the manuscript on my then-youngest’s 3rd birthday, March 2, 2000.

Looking back on that era of dial-up internet and few distractions, I realize what a perfect bubble of concentration I had. (Oh, to go back to those twitter-free days!) I would just sit down at 9 AM, when the library opened, and write like a demon until it was time to pick up my kids or relieve the babysitter, whichever applied to that particular day.

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Ah the art of Savoir-Faire.  Does it really come down to a good haircut and good champagne? Maybe.

Merriam Webster’s definition of the French noun is this:

sa⋅voir-faire

Capacity for appropriate action; especially: a polished sureness in social behavior.

I find it funny right now, in this economy, I’ve gotten a part-time job to fill in some holes with my freelance work while my husband and I both search for full-time work again post his layoff. Oh right, the funny (ironic) part–the 20 hours a week I am working at a gourmet retail store called Bella Cucina Artful Food is the best 20 hours a week I spend. What does that say? I adore it. I love my coworkers, love the product, love our customers and honestly cannot believe I get paid to chat about food all day. That’s interesting to me, considering I’ve spend the better part of my adult life getting the good degree, landing the coveted position at top companies–and for what? To find out I adore retail (or maybe it’s the chatting about luxurious foods all day part)?

At any rate, I don’t think Mireille Guiliano (the queen of Savoir Faire) would be all that surprised. See, she was CEO of Veuve Clicquot Ponsardin Champagne and took it to 25% share of the market while she was at the helm (she was there from 1984 until her retirement in 2007). And she’s recently written a fabulous business book called Women, Work & The Art of Savoir Faire: Business Sense & Sensibility.

This little gem is one part business book, one part style and etiquette. The perfect read in today’s corporate culture.

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Do you have a place in your mind that represents paradise to you? Although I lived on Oahu for a short time when I was quite young, Hawaii occupies that place for me. Hawaii holds such a dear place in my heart and mind but, it’s an image forged within the mind of a child; and so I wonder if the place that the little girl remembers truly exists? Yet I have this fear that if I went back, I would never leave.

Several years ago, I read West of Then by Tara Bray Smith when it was first published. It is the story of a mother and daughter’s journey in that Hawaiian paradise; a story so remarkable and so profound that it became etched in my mind, so much so that I wanted to talk to the woman behind the book. I am so honored to say that this week’s culture piece is an interview with this fantastic author, where she talks writing, family and of course, our shared adoration of magical Hawaii.
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Drew Barrymore’s sartorial wink and a nod to the Valley of the Dolls at the Golden Globes last week made me realize it’s a good time to talk about that literary gem. I finally got around to reading it recently. Now, I see what all the fuss is about.

Valley of the Dolls is loaded – with sex (and more sex), celebrity, and of course, all those dolls (for those of you who are still wondering – dolls are pills) – all chewed up and spit out by the sacrificial beast of Hollywood. Upton Sinclair, it’s not – nor does it even try to fake it – it’s just true chick-lit all in its delicious glory. All those authors out there with their cotton-candy pink-hued book jacket covers could learn a thing or two from Jacqueline Susann about how to write a timeless piece of fiction. A piece of fiction so great you fly through it over a weekend (preferably a weekend where you’ve stocked up on a couple bottles of wine to compliment the reading – dolls optional).

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I’m reading this book called Not Buying It by Judith Levine. It’s been on my list of reads for about as long as it’s been published (two years) and I’m enjoying it immensely (your local library is a wonderful thing). It’s pretty fitting to be reading now, with the current state of the economy and the average American’s debt level hovering in the stratosphere. I’m completely fascinated by this work. It was written just after Saddam Hussein was found in that spider hole (circa 2003), and it blows my mind how relevant it is to what’s happening right now.

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