Required Reading (If You Want to Be Interesting)

Don’t be a sissy.

For this merry month of May, the time when the great season of reading indoors because of bad weather draws to a close (I love it! It gives me an excuse), I’m going to do something I never do — give you, gentle reader, a list of my favorite books, in no particular order except for the first one — which is my first favorite. When A Tree Grows in Brooklyn was published, it became so popular, in part because of the enthusiasm of American soldiers overseas, that the publisher had to borrow printing presses from other companies to print enough books.

Apparently, that has happened only one other time — when Oprah Winfrey started her book club with a novel called The Deep End of the Ocean.

So here they are:

• A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – Betty Smith

• Never Let Me Go – Kazuo Ishiguro

• Wolf Hall – Hilary Mantel

• The Haunting of Hill House – Shirley Jackson

• True Grit – Charles Portis

• In Cold Blood – Truman Capote

• Andersonville – MacKinlay Kantor

• More Than You Know – Beth Gutcheon

• The Art of Fielding – Chad Harbach

• Commonwealth – Ann Patchett

• Disappearing Earth – Julia Phillips

• Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier

• Reservoir 13 – Jon McGregor

• Death Comes for the Archbishop – Willa Cather

• National Velvet – Enid Bagnold

• The Hours – Michael Cunningham

• The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald

• Where I’m Calling From – Raymond Carver

• The Great Believers – Rebecca Makkai

• Different Seasons – Stephen King

• Jane Eyre – Charlotte Brontë

---

Hot Recipe Tip

REALLY Green Pasta Salad

This is so good and healthy.

It’s also really fun to look at — very Elphaba. You can convince your children they’ll turn green if they eat it.

You can swap out the spinach for arugula for a more peppery finish. The miso in the sauce does a lot of the heavy lifting, imparting a salty, almost Parmesan-like quality — but if you don’t have any, just add more salt. You can eat the salad immediately or chill it for a summer picnic.

Ingredients:

• 1 pound short pasta, such as fusilli

• 2 cups sugar snap peas

• 1 cup frozen English peas

• 3 packed cups baby spinach

• 2 packed cups basil leaves, plus more for serving

• ½ cup extra-virgin olive oil

• 2 tablespoons white miso (if you have it)

• 1 garlic clove, crushed

• Zest and juice from 1 lemon

• 4 ounces Parmesan (or other firm, salty cheese such as feta), sliced or crumbled

Instructions:

1. Boil pasta in heavily salted water and cook until al dente. Just before draining, add the snap peas and English peas to the boiling water to barely soften — about 30 seconds. Drain the pasta and peas, and rinse lightly with cold water.

2. Blend the spinach, basil, oil, miso, garlic, and lemon zest and juice in a blender until a bright green purée forms. Taste and adjust seasoning with salt and a few grinds of pepper, then blend again.

3. Toss the pasta and peas in a large bowl. Season with salt and pepper. Add the Parmesan and more basil leaves. Cool and toss once more before serving.

---

Hot Writing Tip

Don’t be a sissy. Read a book at least every week. Come on — you know you can. It will make you a better writer, guaranteed.

Study how the writers you admire do things — how they describe a character, when they choose to write down speech in quotation marks rather than just summarize it (Hint: It’s like the part in the musical where Tony can’t express his love anymore in just words and so sings Maria). In an upcoming edition of The Gasp, we’ll talk about writing speech — and why enough is perfectly tantalizing, but too much is like drowning in syrup.

---

Hot Life Tip

Swimming is the best exercise there is — and it helps to be weightless. Run in the water. Loosen up your joints.

Swimming is my favorite thing to do… People suggest it’s why I live on Cape Cod by the mighty North Atlantic Ocean and Nantucket Sound.

But I hate the ocean — and especially hate the sand. I only go into bodies of water where you can see the bottom, just in case there’s anything terrifying or icky down there.

READ A VERY INCONVENIENT SCANDAL

Order my new book and sign up for my Substack to receive a peek at the first page of the upcoming THE BIRDWATCHER—my first sort-of foray into crime and oh-so-much punishment. Paid subscribers will have access to the first chapter. The cover of THE BIRDWATCHER is being worked on a little bit longer - but I’ll reveal it as soon as it’s ready - I promise!

---

---

FINALLY, if you’d ever like to write to me, you can do so here.