Susan Orlean, THE LIBRARY BOOK
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[0:49]I'm here today with the legendary Susan Orlean, who is the staff writer at the New Yorker magazine
[0:55]and the author of eight books, including Rintin, Saturday Night, and the Orchid Thief,
[1:00]which was made into the Academy Award-winning film adaptation. Her latest book, the library book,
[1:04]was nominated for the Andrew Carnegie Nonfiction Prize and the Los Angeles Times Book Prize.
[1:09]She currently splits her time between Upstate New York and Los Angeles.
[1:12]Welcome, Susan. Thanks for coming on Moms. I don't have time to read books.
[1:15]I'm thrilled to be with you, especially on a Saturday. This is like a huge,
[1:20]you know, very nice thing you're doing, so thank you. It's great. It's actually a great way
[1:25]to get yourself up and out on a Saturday, right? So you've written a million amazing things.
[1:31]Let's talk about the library book first. So what inspired you to write the library book and tell
[1:36]listeners who might not know what it's about? The library book is a nonfiction book that actually
[1:42]has several narrative threads. On one level, it was a book in which I wanted to explore what the
[1:50]daily life of a library was all about. And I was focusing on the Los Angeles Public Library,
[1:56]the main branch downtown. And I had that in mind when I discovered quite unexpectedly that
[2:06]the LA Central Library was the site of the largest library fire in American history. This took place
[2:15]in 1986. It was an arson fire that destroyed 400,000 books. It damaged 700,000 books. And it closed
[2:26]the library for seven years. So what had begun as this more general curiosity about what is the daily
[2:34]life of a library like became a story about the near death and rebirth of a library and an
[2:44]investigation into who did it and why. And at the bottom of that as well, to add one more thread,
[2:52]was the thing that probably got me interested to begin with, which was I have an incredibly
[3:00]emotional response to libraries. I feel like it isn't entirely rational or logical. It's some
[3:11]feeling that's much bigger and deeper and more touching than just saying, oh, well, it's a building
[3:20]with books in it. There's something about libraries that feel really emotional. And I don't think
[3:26]I'm alone in that feeling. So the book also was an attempt to explore that. Why do we feel so attached
[3:36]and connected to libraries? And why does the idea of one burning down feel so deeply distressing?
[3:45]I love how you mentioned at the beginning of the book that many libraries in the past were
[3:48]based after the designs of religious institutions and churches and cathedrals that there's
[3:53]almost something holy about the design, even of a library. And they do have this feeling of being
[4:00]a sort of sacred space. I think we all feel that there's something in the air in a library that
[4:07]feels special. And that's really interesting. I think we all feel wonderful walking into bookstores,
[4:14]walking into an art museum. There is this quality of being out of normal life that you feel in a
[4:25]library that is quite wonderful. I feel like it's more museum. It's more like going into the
[4:32]impressionist wing of the net and looking at the, I mean, you interact obviously much more in a
[4:37]library with the work, but it's some sort of reverence that you have to bring to it when you go into
[4:42]the library, I think. Well, I also think it's more like a museum in the sense that it's not a
[4:48]place of commerce. I mean, I love bookstores. This isn't meant to be a competition between libraries
[4:55]and bookstores, but bookstores are places of commerce. And that's wonderful and they're delightful
[5:01]great places. Going into this sort of preserve of human knowledge that is available to everyone
[5:11]has a very special sacred kind of quality that makes, I think it's elevating. You feel like there's
[5:22]some great good being done in this place. The way you do walking into a museum where there's amazing
[5:29]work that's available to anybody to enjoy. I mean, there's something wonderful about that.
[5:35]And you wrote in the library book about how your mother used to take you to libraries as a young child
[5:40]and how you have continued that tradition onwards. And then it was accepted in the New Yorker
[5:46]when you said how you actually became a little evangelical about book ownership. Perhaps there's
[5:51]a response to the libraries of your youth. Can you talk a little bit about that? This is funny. It was
[5:56]something I hadn't really thought about until I was writing the book, which was my parents were
[6:03]products of the depression and had a very practical attitude towards book ownership, which was
[6:11]you read a book to read it. You don't read a book to then have it on a shelf. And if you could take a
[6:17]book out of the library and read it, why not do that as opposed to owning the book? And they were
[6:24]certainly, thank goodness, able to purchase books. It wasn't a matter of the specific economics
[6:32]of it. But it was something that I think had grown out of their childhood of feeling like, well,
[6:37]that's silly. I mean, that's what libraries are for. You go take books out. It drove me crazy as a
[6:44]kid, partly because I think with kids, when you want something you wanted immediately, you don't
[6:50]want to be on the list of waiting for the people ahead of you to finish reading the book you
[6:55]wanted instantly. But also, I fell so deeply in love with books. I just wanted them around me.
[7:04]When I started college, I began buying books, both the books that I was buying for school,
[7:11]but then also just I started buying more and more books. And then I thought, I just want a house
[7:16]filled with books. Like a lot of things you do when you're a young adult, it was probably in part
[7:23]a reaction to my parents feeling like, well, you don't need to own all these books. And I loved
[7:31]the story that it told about what I'd read and what I cared about. So that aspect of it really
[7:38]did matter to me, whereas I don't think my parents really thought that they needed to show their
[7:43]friends what their interests and tastes were. It's very funny because I also really care,
[7:51]I bought tons and tons of, I mean, I'm so old that you bought music as records back then.
[7:59]And as did I. I mean, no, no, old speaking here. And it mattered to me when I made a new friend
[8:09]or was going out with a guy for the first time to see his record collection and his books to figure
[8:16]out do we have much in common? And so when we all transitioned to using Walkman and ways where your
[8:26]music collection was no longer something sitting out on your shelf, it was like a whole huge chunk
[8:32]of a person's kind of character that you've no longer got to see, which was really interesting
[8:39]initially very disconcerting to me. But I became a crazed book buyer and I loved the physicality of
[8:49]a book so much. And just having them around me, it really was something that I hadn't had a lot of
[8:58]as a kid. And so I think I doubled down to just, in books were cheaper. I don't remember how much
[9:06]hardcover was then. But as a college student, it was not a big reach to be buying books. They were
[9:13]affordable. And used books and all the rest of it. Right. There's always, right. Yeah. I mean,
[9:18]a lot of used books and I mean, certainly records were really cheap. And so I bought records
[9:24]practically every day. I was buying books and records. I feel like one negative that's been said
[9:29]about e-books is how you don't know anything about the person reading them. Like if you go
[9:34]on vacation on the beach, it used to be everybody would hold up a book. And he would say,
[9:37]oh gosh, I read that. That was so good. You could start talking. But now if it was right on their
[9:41]device, you know, it's a glimpse. You don't get to get into somebody else. Yeah. It's funny
[9:46]because I've been traveling a lot, talking about the library book. And one of my favorite things
[9:52]when I get on an airplane is just everybody's reading. And I love seeing what they're reading.
[9:58]The fact is not.
[10:00]90% of them are reading Dan Brown or, you know,
[10:04]these crime and suspense novels.
[10:06]So, I mean, I would say that's overwhelmingly the case,
[10:10]but it's still fun to see what people are reading.
[10:13]And if they're reading on their phone or on a Kindle,
[10:17]you don't get that same chance of sort of glancing
[10:20]and seeing what they're reading.
[10:21]I feel like people are reading far less on planes.
[10:24]So, as we were talking about, we both travel a lot to,
[10:27]I mean, we go out to LA a lot.
[10:28]And I feel like most of the time people are watching movies.
[10:30]I mean, I'm always, you know, I bring book after book
[10:33]just in case I end up with a book that's like not enough
[10:35]to hold my interest for the whole flight.
[10:37]Right.
[10:38]I don't know.
[10:38]Sometimes I walk the aisles and I'm like,
[10:40]I don't know how many people are actually reading.
[10:41]This is such a good time to read.
[10:43]It's dark here.
[10:44]It's quiet.
[10:45]Nobody's gonna bother you.
[10:46]I think that people are deaf.
[10:49]And I see a lot of people playing solitaire on their phone
[10:52]and doing just time-wisters.
[10:55]But I do still see a lot of people reading.
[10:59]And I'm always so happy.
[11:01]I just feel like even if they're reading a book
[11:03]that I don't particularly find interesting,
[11:06]I think how nice to see that people are reading.
[11:10]It just makes me feel good about the world.
[11:13]Maybe there's some way to partner with the airlines
[11:15]and hand out books, you know, have like,
[11:18]and airlines.
[11:19]Twenty books on a flight and you just like keep it
[11:21]in one of the overhead compartments.
[11:23]And then it's like a little library
[11:24]and everybody on the plane could just.
[11:26]Actually it's a great idea.
[11:27]Why?
[11:28]I mean, airlines used to have magazines.
[11:30]Right.
[11:31]Yes.
[11:32]And I mean, it was a huge loss when they no longer
[11:35]had a variety of magazines.
[11:38]I mean, I always read magazines when I flew.
[11:41]Now they have the airline magazine.
[11:44]And that's it.
[11:45]Yeah, that's not, I mean, Skymaller,
[11:46]I feel like it's a little more entertaining than anything.
[11:48]Yeah, I know, and now I'm really missing
[11:50]because I don't have Skymall anymore.
[11:52]That was my favorite reading material.
[11:54]I mean, especially with like little kids even,
[11:56]I would like, we get like looking.
[11:58]What would you want?
[11:59]Yeah, you can pick anything in the Skymall.
[12:01]Yeah, I would do that with my son too.
[12:03]Yeah, anyway.
[12:04]Well, okay, I'll talk to JetBlue when this is over.
[12:06]But we'll see what happens.
[12:08]There's one quote you wrote that was so beautiful
[12:10]about libraries that I just have to read it now.
[12:12]It wasn't that time stopped in the library.
[12:14]It was as if it were captured here,
[12:16]collected here, and in all libraries.
[12:18]And not only my time, my life,
[12:20]but all human time as well.
[12:21]And the library time is damned up, not just stopped,
[12:24]but saved.
[12:25]The library is a gathering pool of narratives
[12:28]and of the people who come to find them.
[12:30]It is where we can glimpse immortality
[12:32]and the library we can live forever.
[12:34]That is so beautiful.
[12:35]Thank you.
[12:36]Tell me a little more about writing that line, that passage.
[12:40]When I was drawn to doing this book,
[12:43]I was trying to understand what that magic was
[12:49]about a library.
[12:51]And it really began with this sort of notion
[12:54]that it was a communal memory,
[12:56]that it was the place where everything that a culture knew
[13:01]and dreamed about and fantasized about was collected.
[13:06]But at the same time, it's a gathering place of people,
[13:10]each of whom have come there for their own reason.
[13:14]And it began feeling like this layering of stories
[13:19]that in the course of a day in the library,
[13:22]you have somebody coming in doing genealogy research
[13:26]and somebody doing work on their MBA
[13:30]and somebody teaching their child to read.
[13:33]And everybody is coming in with their own story
[13:38]in a place filled with story.
[13:42]That sort of wonderful nesting doll quality
[13:46]began seeming richer and richer to me
[13:49]the more I thought about it.
[13:51]And the idea that the library's remarkable ability
[13:57]that no human can possibly achieve
[14:01]is the eternal memory.
[14:05]That a library is filled with these stories that are permanent.
[14:10]I mean, for all intents and purposes,
[14:13]they can remain there forever,
[14:16]whereas human memory is just limited to our lifetime.
[14:20]And it became part of the book in a way
[14:23]I hadn't anticipated, which was, you know,
[14:26]I associated going to the library so much with my mom
[14:29]because my mom always took me.
[14:31]And she loved libraries, loved librarians.
[14:36]I began working in the book and she was delighted
[14:39]that I was doing a book about libraries.
[14:42]And not long after I began working on the book,
[14:45]she was diagnosed with dementia.
[14:48]And her memory began eroding.
[14:52]The idea that a library could last forever
[14:56]and hold these memories forever versus me witnessing
[15:01]in real time, the disintegration of a person's memory.
[15:06]It became really emotional for me.
[15:10]And made the book feel like my effort to put down on the page,
[15:16]the memories that I shared with my mom.
[15:19]Yeah, that's beautiful.
[15:20]Did she read it? Did you?
[15:21]No, she passed away before I finished the book.
[15:25]And that was really, that was tough.
[15:28]It was tough because the book felt so much
[15:31]a part of my relationship with her.
[15:35]And yeah, I would have loved for her to read it.
[15:39]I'm glad she knew that I was working on it.
[15:42]That meant a lot to me.
[15:43]Maybe this is what you needed to do
[15:44]to help yourself through that time.
[15:47]It certainly comforted me.
[15:50]It did.
[15:50]And feeling like there was this reaching back
[15:55]to those memories that I shared with her at a time
[15:58]when she was sort of receding.
[16:01]It really was comforting.
[16:03]It's so nice.
[16:05]And yet you also have this whole sort of not crime fiction,
[16:08]but like investigative aspect of the book.
[16:11]It's not just an ode to libraries past
[16:14]and a mother-daughter story,
[16:16]but you delve deep into everything that happened.
[16:19]And was it arson and the fire code and the building
[16:23]and could this have been avoided?
[16:25]And which firemen would of which staircase
[16:27]and all the different lawsuits back and forth,
[16:30]which I could not believe happened
[16:32]with, I'm forgetting his name.
[16:33]I have it here.
[16:34]Harry, yes.
[16:35]Harry Peak and that he kept changing his facts around.
[16:38]So I almost finished his book being like,
[16:40]well, I don't know, did Harry accept this fire?
[16:43]Did he nod?
[16:44]Like, I don't even know.
[16:45]I don't know what to make of this.
[16:47]Well, it was really, it was very much a crime story
[16:51]because you have this gigantic catastrophic fire
[16:56]that was determined to be in arson.
[16:59]And so the first question is my God,
[17:01]who am I gonna do that?
[17:02]We'll do this.
[17:03]And, you know, arson's funny,
[17:05]you've got a huge percentage of arson
[17:09]is done for financial gain.
[17:11]I mean, you ensure your business,
[17:14]you set it on fire, you get your insurance money.
[17:18]That, I'm not recommending this,
[17:20]but that is a very common scenario
[17:23]that somebody stands to gain financially.
[17:27]Or it's a rival setting someone's business
[17:33]or home on fire.
[17:34]I mean, that's a very, also a common scenario.
[17:37]Bring a library, nobody has anything to gain by it.
[17:41]So you remove this giant motivation.
[17:44]Like, so nobody's gonna gain anything financially.
[17:49]Who would do this?
[17:50]We've got people who have mental illness
[17:53]that causes them to light things on fire.
[17:57]That's one possibility.
[17:59]But then there's this free floating question of,
[18:02]all right, in this case,
[18:04]who would have done this and why?
[18:06]Harry Peak was a young unemployed aspiring actor
[18:12]who by all accounts was a very charming, likable guy.
[18:18]No one I spoke to spoke ill of him.
[18:21]I mean, they say, you know, he drove me crazy.
[18:23]He was always late on his rent,
[18:25]but he was so just, he could charm anybody,
[18:28]everybody liked him.
[18:30]So he was not the classic image of sort of spooky loner.
[18:35]He was a very well-like guy.
[18:37]He loved attention.
[18:39]He was very braggy and tried to put himself
[18:43]at the center of drama all the time.
[18:46]But there was nothing that indicated
[18:50]that he was somebody who had an attraction to fire
[18:55]or had any grudge against the library, nothing.
[18:57]The problem was he began telling his friends
[19:01]that he had started the fire.
[19:03]So he is a problem.
[19:04]Yes.
[19:06]I will say I learned a lot about what not to do
[19:09]in terms of committing crime in the course of work
[19:13]and this book, which was pretty funny.
[19:15]But he started bragging to people
[19:17]saying that he had started it.
[19:20]His story was constantly fluid.
[19:24]It was never quite the same story to each friend that he told.
[19:28]I mean, first it was that he was there,
[19:30]then he was there and he started it.
[19:33]And, you know, there were many iterations of the story.
[19:38]There was a reward for information about the fire
[19:42]because of course there was a huge investigation
[19:45]in LA to try to determine who had done this.
[19:48]Although I love how you put in the book that like in New York,
[19:50]there was only just this tiny little mint in a bit
[19:52]and like the back of a newspaper.
[19:53]I know.
[19:54]That was, I loved that part.
[19:55]Anyways, sorry, go on.
[19:56]Yeah, well, it was really, I mean, it won.
[19:58]No big deal.
[19:58]Yeah, just touch.
[20:00]done page like 822. But he also had done a few things to change his appearance. He had
[20:07]shaved his mustache, he cut his hair, he had enough that one of his roommates decided there was
[20:14]something fishy and coupled with the fact that he had claimed that he started the fire,
[20:19]she contacted the fire department and said, I think it's him. He produced over the next several months
[20:29]seven different alibis for where he had been that day. This is another thing I learned about
[20:35]crime. It's not very convincing to have seven different alibis. If you had one alibi,
[20:42]that would be convincing, but he kept changing his story elaborately. Not just a little bit
[20:48]different, but totally different. So this can be your next book. It's like, right.
[20:52]Susan Norland's guides, how to, how to, insurance fraud. Part of the person, part two.
[21:00]Yeah, no, I've got it all figured it all out. Yeah. So the pursuit of the truth about the fire
[21:07]and the legal pursuit of Harry Peak was so convoluted, fascinating, ultimately unresolved,
[21:18]but following the legal case was fascinating to me. And there were a lot of things that came into
[21:25]play, including the fact that even though he was arrested, the district attorney had had some
[21:33]significant failures in prosecution in LA right before this case came up. And so there was a lot
[21:41]of fear in the DA's office about pursuing a case that wasn't a guaranteed win. There are other
[21:51]facts which were there wasn't ever any hard evidence connecting him to the fire. So it became
[21:59]fascinating. And the whole, I mean, I found it really interesting to learn not only about arson,
[22:05]which is a really complex, confusing crime much of the time, but also the history of the
[22:14]burning of libraries, which has sadly a very extensive history. And in the book you said,
[22:23]you actually experimented with burning books just to see what that would look like,
[22:28]and that it was as hard for you to do that as like throwing away a plant, for example.
[22:32]Yeah, I mean, I've thought I've never seen a book burn for the sake of writing about it. Let
[22:38]me just burn a book so I can have a visual kind of image, but also I was curious about the taboo
[22:48]because it felt like I can't burn a book. And I thought that's silly. I can burn a book and I can go
[22:54]by a replacement. I mean, this is just some paper. There's nothing special. I could barely do it.
[23:03]And that to me was, again, it supported this notion that we feel something about books and libraries
[23:15]that isn't purely logical. It's something emotional, spiritual, magical that makes a book feel
[23:25]almost as if it has a life of its own. And burning a book was one of the more uncomfortable things
[23:33]I've ever done, to be honest. I feel like there's two parts of losing books. One is losing them
[23:40]but one is another way is in the books that were never written that should have been written from
[23:45]the loss of people. So it's like a library can be emptied out by tragedy in the flesh, like with
[23:52]the burning books. And as you saw, but also the sadness of who didn't write the books that they
[23:58]should have, like with things like the Holocaust and the AIDS crisis. And we're interviewing
[24:02]Will Swalby. He was talking about this. And in his book about the sadness of the books,
[24:07]the stories were never told. Yeah. I feel like that's like another element to this.
[24:11]Oh, it's huge. And that's where this idea that books are, these documents, we produce that sort
[24:19]of say we lived, we existed, we knew things, we dreamed of things, we imagined things, and we're
[24:29]sharing that now in perpetuity. Each time you remove that possibility of those stories, it's a
[24:39]real loss. So does that motivate you? What motivates you to write? I mean, you've been writing
[24:45]all for a long time, all these amazing books that have been turned into movies that are now
[24:49]staples. Like we were talking about earlier, like blue crush and adaptation. And now the library,
[24:54]can I say that? The library is going to be a TV show. Like, why do you do it? Why did you start doing
[25:00]it? What is it about it that gets you excited to do it day in and day out? Well, I think from the time
[25:07]I was really very young, I thought there was some absolute sorcery in writing and reading. I think
[25:18]the idea that I could read a book and feel like I was somewhere else and living in another place or
[25:25]inhabiting another universe was so extraordinary and so transporting that I thought, well, I want to do
[25:35]that. I want to be the sorcerer who makes that happen. And being by nature, somebody who's just
[25:44]curious and imagining kind of digging into something that wouldn't normally be part of my life,
[25:53]that was irresistible. But then there's the other side of that, which is wanting to tug on someone's
[26:00]sleeve and say, I just did the most amazing thing. Let me tell you about this or oh my god, I just
[26:05]spent, you know, six years in the LA Public Library. Let me tell you in the amazing stories
[26:10]that unfold in the library. I mean, so it's both the acquiring the knowledge, which I find really
[26:19]intoxicating and wonderful. And then there's this sort of performative part of it of saying to people,
[26:26]ooh, let me tell you, I just saw something incredibly cool and interesting that I want to tell you
[26:32]about. Awesome. How do you do your writing? Where do you do it? Do you actually work in a library? Do you
[26:37]work at home? Is this book any different? This book was different. I mean, normally I do all my
[26:43]research first. So the first half of whatever I'm doing is out in the field researching interviewing
[26:50]people. And then for many years, when I lived in New York, I had an office at the New Yorker and I
[26:57]would work in the office. But then I left New York and started working at home. And then when my
[27:05]son was born, suddenly working at home became a little more challenging. And it was a constant
[27:13]kind of race to figure out where could I work, where I could really shut off and focus.
[27:22]And as my son has gotten older, that's become less of an issue, but it's still working at home
[27:27]has its challenges. Now I split my time between LA and upstate New York. And in both places,
[27:35]I have a little free standing building, that little office that's even just being 10 yards from
[27:43]my house makes it feel separate. In the case of working on the library book, I had been working
[27:50]at home and I just was stuck. I was distracted. My husband works at home too, which meant an
[27:59]additional distraction. So for a while, I rented a co-working space. I thought, you know, I've just
[28:07]got to get out of the house. I can't be working at home. And then one day, I was working at the
[28:12]library because I wasn't for whatever reason. I didn't have a chance to go to this co-working space.
[28:18]And I thought, why don't I just work at the library? It's free. It's very peaceful. It's,
[28:26]you know, a perfectly good place to work. And I thought, oh my God, I'm writing a book about
[28:31]libraries. And it only occurred to me now that this is a great place to work, which really cracked
[28:37]me up. And there are specific reasons that I wasn't. When you're working on nonfiction book,
[28:43]you often have lots and lots of material. And obviously, you can't leave that in the library.
[28:48]So it means every day having to pack up and take your stuff home and back again. So there are
[28:55]certain ways that it's not ideal, but I was toward the end of the book. And I didn't have as much
[29:01]kind of files and stuff to cart around with me. I'm now back to working in my little,
[29:10]my little studio. And the only thing is to keep my husband and son out and to make it clear to them
[29:21]that it is not like a clubhouse for them to come hang out with me because I mean, I like the fact
[29:27]that it's just my space and that I can lock the door and nobody comes in. The other day I was
[29:34]trying to get something done. I went to a coffee shop and then I realized I couldn't plug in my
[29:37]computer there and I didn't have enough power and it was like a whole thing. Anyway, I had told
[29:41]everybody I wasn't going to be home. So I snuck it and like hit out in my son's room. I closed the door.
[29:46]My son, his way boarding school. So like nobody would think that I was in there. And I was like,
[29:51]I just don't want anyone to bother me for a little bit. I just have to get this done.
[29:55]It's, well, I also in the course of finishing this book and my
[30:00]previous book did residencies at Yato and McDowell and it was something that I never quite understood
[30:08]why these were so why people sought them out because I just didn't quite understand why they were
[30:16]so necessary. I don't think I would have gotten the book done if I hadn't had those residencies
[30:25]where and I didn't ever go for a long time but even going for two weeks or three weeks
[30:30]where that's all I did was work and just be able to get focused and make a lot of headway on the
[30:39]book. I mean I'm so grateful for having had the chance to do that. When I got home I was
[30:47]I was already then in the groove and it was a lot easier for me but when my son was little I
[30:55]built a little writing studio we were living in the Hudson Valley at the time full time
[31:01]and I would say goodbye to him and then sneak to the studio because he couldn't see it from the
[31:07]house and I thought well as long as he doesn't know where I am he thinks I've left you know
[31:14]gone somewhere far away and then one day here a little town on the window and I look up and he's
[31:20]there and he looked so excited like mommy I found you and I said hi oh my god and that was the end
[31:28]of that. But it's challenging you know it's hard enough to get yourself to focus and then when
[31:35]you've got family and all of the sort of regular day-to-day stuff that comes into your life to be
[31:45]attended to it can be really hard to buckle down and work on a book. You mentioned you were back
[31:52]in your studio can you mention what you're working on now? Well I'm working on this television adaptation
[31:58]of the library book I'm going to go back to doing some magazine pieces for the New Yorker and
[32:06]I'm toying with working on a book that would be more of a sort of writer's memoir a kind of memoir
[32:15]of my experiences writing. Please do it I would love to read it. I mean I'm sure I'm not the only one
[32:22]but I would read that in a heartbeat I think people would love that. Well thank you that's so nice to
[32:28]to hear I mean put it up the list move it up. Yeah well it's you know I at this point I've been writing
[32:36]for you know it doesn't feel like a long time to me but it's been a long time and I've had some
[32:41]really interesting experiences and I think it would be fun to write about the writer's life that
[32:51]I've led it's been quite interesting and I hope it would be interesting I'm sure it would be
[32:58]so save it for your book but do you have any gems little pieces of advice for aspiring authors
[33:04]now? Well what I've said to people that you know these are ever greens but I think the number one
[33:11]thing is to read as much as you possibly can read. I was talking to a young woman the other day
[33:17]who said you know I'm trying to get develop a voice as a writer and I said you know I think the
[33:23]best thing when this sounds absolutely shocking but the best thing is to imitate the writers you
[33:31]really like and eventually you won't be imitating them you will begin finding your own voice but
[33:39]it's almost like a apprenticeship you take the work you really admire and try to see how it
[33:47]works and try to use that same mechanism and eventually it will become yours and you'll do it your
[33:54]own way but that I do think the most important thing is read as much as you can and write as much as
[34:00]you can so have one question which you don't have to answer but I feel like you have green in your
[34:05]hair I do and at first I thought oh she just missed a piece of gray or something but no it's actually
[34:11]so let me just start why do you have this you know it's it's so funny and it's kind of faded
[34:16]right now it's normally a little more vivid I gosh I think I did this three or four years ago where
[34:24]I just was feeling like doing something different with my hair and I'm too much of a chicken to cut
[34:31]it really short or do something like that but I had this crazy idea that I wanted to put in a
[34:37]streak of color and I have a very adorable hairdresser who said oh I think it would look great
[34:45]we'll just bleach out a chunk and do a color and I was incredibly nervous it was so funny
[34:54]and she kept saying to me don't worry you can always die back to your own color like it's not
[35:01]permanent if you don't want it to be and what I found really funny is I did I was just really
[35:07]nervous and she did it and I came home and I hadn't told my husband or son that I was doing it
[35:14]and neither of them noticed for for ages and then one day my husband said to me he said do you've
[35:21]got like green in your hair and I said yeah I've had it for you know three weeks and he said well
[35:28]you can take it out right and I said well no it's actually my hair I think he thought I had
[35:33]clipped in you know a little lock of hair but he kind of looked at me and said well it's cute
[35:43]I thought okay that's fair enough that's that's the best that I can hope for it's kind of
[35:49]it's fun to do I mean it requires a little maintenance but I enjoy it it's awesome thank you you're
[35:56]welcome well thanks for coming on mom so don't have time to read books and thanks for all your time
[36:00]well thank you this was such a pleasure okay thanks this episode has been sponsored by book of the
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[36:12]thanks for listening to moms don't have time to read books you can follow me on instagram at
[36:16]moms don't have time to read books thanks so much to Steve and Ryan at texture sound for the
[36:21]sound editing and thank you to morning moon productions for providing this fantastic intro and
[36:26]out trim music thanks for listening you could always email me at zibby at zibbyowans.com