An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
From Eudora Welty’s memoir of childhood to May Sarton’s reflections on her seventieth year, writers’ journals offer an irresistible opportunity to join a creative thinker in musing on the events—whether in daily life or on a global scale—that shape our lives. In An Extraordinary Year of Ordinary Days, best-selling mystery novelist Susan Wittig Albert invites us to revisit one of the most tumultuous years in recent memory, 2008, through the lens of 365 ordinary days in which her reading, writing, and thinking about issues in the wider world—from wars and economic recession to climate change—caused her to reconsider and reshape daily practices in her personal life.
Albert’s journal provides an engaging account of how the business of being a successful working writer blends with her rural life in the Texas Hill Country and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains of New Mexico. As her eclectic daily reading ranges across topics from economics, food production, and oil and energy policy to poetry, place, and the writing life, Albert becomes increasingly concerned about the natural world and the threats facing it, especially climate change and resource depletion. Asking herself, “What does it mean? And what ought I do about it?”, she determines practical steps to take, such as growing more food in her garden, and also helps us as readers make sense of these issues and consider what our own responses might be.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Known for such popular mystery series as China Bayles and the Cottage Tales of Beatrix Potter, Albert now invites readers to share her 69th year through daily journal musings. Her ordinary days are filled with gardening, cooking, and chores on her Texas hill country farm, but her real business is writing, and Albert discusses the creative process, negotiating new contracts, technology, and public appearances. She is invested in the world completely, and expresses serious concern about the deepening recession, climate change, the tumultuous political landscape of recent years, and methods for reducing her own carbon footprint. Her journal reads as smoothly as a letter written to a dear friend; a treasure trove of quotes from favorite authors and suggested readings on relevant subjects enhance each page. More than the rudimentary musings of a popular author who has grown with the times, this multi-faceted journal serves as a valuable overview to the way we were.