Not really, unless it’s spending an afternoon surrounded by books and a convention center full of people who write and read them.

I spent Sunday afternoon in just that kind of book bliss, at Wordstock, Portland’s annual homage to literature in all its forms.

True confessions: I missed the big names, which you can read about elsewhere, including appearances by Jennifer Egan, Ursula Le Guin and Daniel Woodrell, author of Winter’s Bone and one of my new favorites. Follow this links for the Oregonian’s coverage of Le Guin.

Instead, I used the time to catch up with some of Portland’s own.

Here’s an update on the city’s literary scene direct from the floor of the Oregon Convention Center:

1. Take your pick of writers’ spaces – The Writer’s Dojo, a North Portland co-working space for writers founded by Jeffrey Selin, is still going strong. Writers can pay $85 a month for unlimited use or $25 to visit once a week, with discounts available. Because it’s shared, the space is great for working on fiction or other long-term projects, not so much for hard-core reporting or anything that involves a lot of phone work, Selin says. If you’re doing historical research, the Oregon Historical Society is free and open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, with reference librarians on call to provide whatever assistance you need. Other writing spaces: The Writer’s Attic (see more about The Attic Institute below); the Sterling Room for Writers at the Multnomah County Central Library; and the Oregon Writer’s Colony’s Colonyhouse , a log-cabin retreat for writers in Rockaway on the Oregon coast.

2. Reading Local Portland gets a facelift – Reading Local Portland, a website devoted to all things literary in the Rose City just got a facelift – and can I say, it looks amazing. It’s easier than ever to find out about local authors, readings and other events. There are also directories of authors, editors, publishers, bookstores, libraries and more. Blogger Gabe Barber, who runs the site, says he’s picked up a handful of sponsorships from area businesses, including Broadway Books, and is on the lookout for more.

3. Writing classes galore – Writers of all experience levels looking for help with fiction, nonfiction, memoir or poetry projects can choose from variety of classes, workshops and writers’ groups, many of which were at Wordstock. The Attic Institute is offering more than a dozen classes during its autumn term including one-day or multi-week courses on point of view, fairy tales, poetry, getting published and novel writing; see the complete list on their website. Willamette Writers also is offering a number of workshops this fall, including “Kick Your Writing Out of the Nest” and “Kickstart Your Writing.” The group has five chapters throughout Oregon, many of which host monthly meetings with guest speakers. Find out more on their website. Like to cruise? WW president and playwright Cynthia Whitcomb is hosting a 2012 writing cruise of 12, 14 or 26 days with daily classes and critique groups. Email her for a brochure: cwhitcomb@aol.com.

4. Help for your ebook design – If you’re working on an ebook – and these days, who isn’t? – you’ve got plenty of resources to draw from. At Wordstock, I talked to several Oregon-based companies that offer design, editing and distribution for authors working in digital formats, including Digital Bindery and Bookbyte Digital.

5. YA authors in abundance – Maybe it was because my 10-year-old tagged along, but there appeared to be a larger than usual representation of books for young adult (YA) and middle-school aged readers. According to a few authors I talked to, most YA books today have female protagonists and are aimed at girl readers – not great for parents like me with sons who are avid bookworms. We did find a few exceptions. One was author Lisa Nowak, there to support her auto-racing YA book, Running Wide Open. We also met Dale Basye, who’s currently discussing movie rights to his Heck series (subtitled, “Where the Bad Kids Go” – check out the website for the catchy theme song). Basye shared a booth with friend and fellow YA author David Michael Slater, who describes his six-part series that starts with The Book of Nonsense as a DaVinci Code for kids. (Portland Westsiders, Book 2, The Book of Knowledge, even features Gabriel Park!)

6. Vampires still rule – During the few hours I was there Sunday, the biggest audience congregated to hear about vampires, and why six years after Twilight, stories of preternatural characters are still hot. That was also evident walking through the exhibit aisles, with many local, small press publishers offering stories in that genre.

7. Donate books to soldiers – A Vancouver, Wash., nonprofit, Books4Charities, is teaming up with Boy Scouts and local churches and companies (US Bank, Umpqua Bank, Mattress World) to collect and donate books to troops overseas and soldiers recuperating at veterans’ hospitals. The group accepts new and used books and cash donations to subsidize shipping costs. Get more information on their website.

Part of the impetus was to keep my 10-year-old son company. Back in June, he signed up for the kids’ summer reading program contest at Portland’s Multnomah County Library, and I signed up for the adult version for moral support. In the adult version, you had to read at least five books and follow the library on Facebook and Twitter to be entered into a drawing at the end of the contest for a handful of reading-related prizes.

Well, guess what? I won! When a library employee called last week I thought it was to ask me about an overdue book (not mine, I swear). Instead, she told me I won the grand prize of a pair passes to Literary Arts’ 2011-2012 Arts & Lecture series. The five-event series features readings and discussions by Annie Proulx, Sebastian Junger and three other world-class authors.

I don’t enter contests often and rarely win anything, so I’m thrilled. I’ve never been to the Literary Arts series either because tickets are expensive, so it really is a great prize. My son, however, is disappointed I did so well. He wanted me to win second prize, a Nook ebook reader.

Me? I can’t wait to hear Proulx, who’s speaking two weeks from now. Look for a post on the writing lessons I pick up from her in coming weeks, and for future posts on everyone else I see in the series.

For today’s post, I should change slogan to, “Here’s what I’ve been reading this summer” because it’s a list of books I’ve been reading since June.

I’ve been on a fiction binge. Maybe it’s because I was working so much or the economy, but when summer rolled around, I was ready to check out of reality and into a world that existed only in someone’s imagination. I hit the library, Powell’s and my own bookshelf.

Here’s what I read that I’d recommend to anyone looking for that one last book to read before summer’s over:

Bel Canto – I forced myself to read Ann Patchett’s bestselling novel after avoiding it for years because of what sounded like a silly premise, then ended up loving it.

Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest - A page turner despite sometimes bloated writing, and a nice wrap up of Stieg Larsson’s triology.

Time of My Life – By freelance writer turned author and fellow Freelance Success member Allison Winn Scotch. This fun plot makes for perfect beach reading.

The Help – Another page turner, can’t wait to see the movie.

No Country for Old Men - Cormac McCarthy at his scariest; great writing, but what a downer.

Rosie - An older novel by Annie Lamott. It’s not her best work, but it’s so her. It’s also interesting to see how Lamott’s writing has evolved since this came out. I can’t wait to read the sequel to this that she did more recently.

Winter’s Bone, because I loved the movie; wanted to read the book to see if I could figure out some plot points that were vague in the movie – they’re still vague in the book, but man, Daniel Woodrell’s prose is like poetry.

Revolutionary Road - I’m about half-way though Richard Yates’ 1961 novel, and will reserve judgement until I’ve read the whole thing. I will say that it has a certain “Mad Men” vibe, so if you like the show, you might find it interesting.

What fiction are you reading that you’d recommend?

Thinking of writing an ebook?

I’ve compiled a wealth of information on writing, publishing and marketing ebooks originally shared during the WordCount Last Wednesday live chat on Twitter, which took place Oct. 27, 2011.

My guest on the chat was Boston area freelance writer Susan Johnston, who blogs at The Urban Muse. Earlier this year, Johnston published her first ebook, The Urban Muse Guide to Online Writing Markets.

During the chat Johnston shared what she’d learned about picking appropriate material, formatting, distribution and promotion. Her comments have been edited for clarity.

What are the advantages of self-publishing an ebook vs. a traditional print book?

Self-publishing means you don’t have to wait for a publisher to choose your book, go through the printing process, etc. Plus, it gives a writer more control over their content and distribution methods. My ebook wouldn’t have worked as a traditionally published print book because there are so many links and so much time-sensitive information. I noticed a gap in the marketplace – a lack of info about online writing markets – so I decided to fill that gap.

How did you get started? What were your first steps?

I looked through my blog for content I could expand upon, then compiled a list of suitable markets. I also looked at the kinds of questions readers left and made sure that my ebook covered all those answers in detail. The blog was a great way to crowdsource topics for the ebook and figure out the kind of info readers wanted.

How much of the book did you take from blog posts and how much was original material?

Less than half the content was pulled from the blog and the rest was original. The directory of markets, which is a large chunk of the ebook, did not appear on the blog.

Is an optimum length or number of chapters or structure for an ebook?

Length depends on the topic. But you definitely want it to be broken into sections and subsections so it’s easily digestible. My ebook is relatively short – 61 pgs – so I wouldn’t want to have too much overlap with the blog. And I used a Q&A format.

Once your ebook is out, should you consider using bits and pieces from it for new blog posts, or keep it premium?

Keep it premium. If you’re charging, buyers want to feel like they’re getting something special.

What about turning an already published book into an ebook?

If your book is out of print and the rights have reverted back to you, it can be a great way to keep it in circulation. There are services like Smashwords.com that can help out with that or you can hire someone to format your book as an ebook.

What about links you include in an ebook – what happens if they go bad?

I took that on as an ongoing project. Buyers of my ebook can sign up for free updates where I add or subtract markets. I also invite readers to email me if they spot a broken or out-dated link and I’ll go through and check periodically. Eventually, I may deeply discount the ebook with the caveat that it won’t be updated anymore. I’ve seen other authors do that.

What subjects sell well as ebooks?

It’s important to choose a topic that fills a need, like the Damon Brown ebook on the iPad or my ebook about online writing markets. Do people want to know how to brew their own beer or start an Etsy store?

What software, services or other resources did you use to put your ebook together?

I typed my ebook using Microsoft Word and hired Amie Fedora to design the cover, then converted to a .pdf file. For simplicity’s sake, I just chose to use a .pdf because that’s almost universally readable. However, I tried to format as I went along and that was a huge hassle! Next time, I’d write first, format second. The toughest part was getting the fonts to embed properly in the .pdf, but there are lots of online resources to help with troubleshooting. Whatever the issue is, you can usually get help by Googling or tweeting. For instance, you could Google “MS Word 2008 embed fonts in .pdf.”

How did you handle setting a price and accepting payments?

I looked at how similar ebooks were priced and chose $15.99. Some ebooks are $9.99 but you can’t discount much from there. Mine is $15.99, and I occasionally discount it to $9.99. My ebook is available through Lulu.com andE-junkie. You can also sell through Amazon but you’ll need an ISBN for that. With E-Junkie, you can have readers pay through PayPa and they automatically generate a download link for their purchase.

Do ebook services take a percent of the sale price?

E-junkie takes a monthly fee and Lulu.com is free to set up and takes a 20 percent fee per sale.

Other than selling through ebook services, how did you promote your ebook?

I promoted it through guest blogging, giving away review copies to bloggers, promoting it on my blog and in my newsletter and on Twitter. Having an established blog and Twitter following really helped. Here’s a guest post I wrote with 12 promotional strategies for ebooks.

What are some common mistakes writers make in putting together an ebook?

Unappealing covers are one mistake. Invest the money for something that conveys a professional impression.

How profitable are ebooks?

It depends on how well you promote it, how the ebook is priced and if there’s a strong need. But the margins per sale are much better than going through a traditional publisher. With a print book, you might get a little bit in royalties for each book sold, but with ebooks it’s almost pure profit. With ebooks, you don’t have hard costs like shipping and materials so they make great blog giveaways, since you can just email a download link.

If you’ve written an ebook, what was your experience? What advice or resources can you share?

I picked it up at an airport bookstore earlier this week and have been sneaking in a few pages every chance I get.

I’ll save my analysis of the entire book for another day. Right now, I want to share the advice Stockett has for working as a freelance writer.

According to the author bio in the book, Stockett spent 16 years working in the magazine publishing industry, and it shows. Woven into the story line of “The Help” are all kinds of subtle suggestions and helpful advice for writers.

Some of it comes in the form of conversations and letters between Skeeter Phelan, one of the book’s main characters and a young woman who’s just come home from college and no longer fits in with her married friends, and Elaine Stein, a New York book editor to whom she first applies for a job, then proposes a novel idea for a book.

One of the tidbits that Stein shares with Skeeter is great advice for writers of all experience levels:

…go to your local newspaper and get an entry-level job. You included in your letter that you “immensely enjoy writing.” When you’re not making mimeographs or fixing your boss’s coffee, look around, investigate, and write. Don’t waste your time on the obvious things. Write about what disturbs you, particularly if it bothers no one else.

Next time you’re working up pitches to send magazines or websites you haven’t written for before, think about that  - is the idea too obvious? Does it bother you? Is it something that bugs you but nobody else? In the book, Skeeter came up with something – will you?

I have a dilemma, a good one. Two summers ago I read all the Harry Potter books with my then 8-year-old and wrote a post analyzing the writing-related takeaways I picked up from the books and J.K. Rowling’s writing style.

Somehow I hit the SEO jackpot. It soon became the most popular post on this blog. It was so popular that when “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1″ came out last fall, I updated it and ran it again. The rerun got as much traffic as the original.

In the months since, those two posts still draw a ton of traffic. One day in May when someone used StumbleUpon to share a link to the rerun, page views for the post hit 1K, which is a good day for my blog. Today, someone else Stumbled the rerun and as I write this, page views are headed toward 3K, close to 10 times the traffic on the entire site yesterday.

What to Do With a Hit?

My question: how can I capitalize on this? Keep writing more posts about Harry Potter? Keep rerunning the same popular posts? Put up a sidebar widget on the front page of my site to showcase my most popular posts? Keep writing posts analyzing writing styles of famous authors and what other writers can learn from them?

I’ve just started the third book in the Stieg Larsson’s Millennium series (The Girl with the Dragon Tatoo, etc.). I’m thinking of conducting an experiment: I’ll write a post similar to the J.K. Rowling post about what I’ve learned from Larsson’s writing style – and I have plenty to say about it – to see if it gets a similar reaction.

With “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2″ due in theaters July 15, I’m wondering whether to re-run the Rowling post again, or do another update. Rowling recently created a website called Pottermore.com and is six days away from making a big announcement about what she’ll be doing with it. Speculation is running rampant that she’ll use it to tell the back stories of characters from the Harry Potter series. If so, it’d make the timing for another Harry Potter post even better. (P.S. Here’s the Pottermore.com teaser Rowling posted on YouTube.)

Have you ever had a runaway hit post? What did you do?

If you’ve ever been in a similar situation, I’d love to hear about it.

Laura Vanderkam

If you’ve never written a book before, tackling such a huge project seems daunting. But judging by the shelves at bookstores, plenty of other people — busy people! — have succeeded in writing books that other people want to read. Many of these authors have full-time jobs and families. They also have the exact same 168 hours per week that you do. How do they do it?

As I’m nearing completion of my third solo manuscript (which has come after numerous ghosted books) I’m starting to see patterns in my own work and that of other authors that make cranking out books every other year doable.

Here are 8 tips to make the process as efficient as possible.

1. Find a subject you can’t stop talking about. Writing a book takes time, and if you have a job and a family, it will take time that you’d usually devote to other things: TV, web surfing, relaxing, etc. To make that tolerable, you have to enjoy your subject more than you enjoy visiting Facebook. If you’re blogging, you’ve probably discovered what topics make the words flow for you. If you’re going to live with a subject for 2 years or more, make sure you enjoy its company. But…

2. Make sure your subject is working for you. Selling books is hard work, so you want your book title and the angle to save you time by doing a lot of heavy lifting for you. Talk with people in the business side of publishing about what will make your subject appealing. When I started writing my most recently published book,168 Hours: You Have More Time Than You Think (www.my168hours.com), I was framing it as a sociological look at the changing way people spend their time. My publisher pointed out, accurately, that people would be more interested in a time management book with some sociology thrown in. What’s in it for the reader? You want to assure people that your book is worth their while.

3. Test drive your material. Write several articles on the topic and see what feedback you get. Not only will this help you build a platform, it will enable you to do a lot of the research (paid!) so that when it’s time to start writing, you’ll be raring to go.

4. Set word count goals. Need to write your book in one year? 75,000 words in 50 weeks is 1500 words per week. Do 300 per workday and you’ll have a draft. Of course not all those words will be keepers. But daily word count goals give you an accurate sense of how much time a book draft will take. How long does it take you to write 300 words? If you have 6 months, that’s 600 words a day. How long does that take?

5. Block that time into your schedule. Cut out something you don’t care about. In the course of writing 168 Hours, I looked at hundreds of time logs, and I have yet to see one that didn’t have time that could be redeployed to a creative endeavor if the person wished. Carpool with neighbors and use the time you’d be picking your kids up at school to write. If necessary, wake up earlier than other people in your house and use that time. Eat at your desk and write then. Skip a meeting that’s only tangentially related to your job and seize that time. The important thing is to keep at it. Give yourself a gold star on a chart for every day you write until it becomes a habit.

6. Don’t aim for perfect. Aim for done. Little known fact: it is easier to edit a lousy draft than to edit a draft that doesn’t exist. This is the theory behind National Novel Writing Month (www.nanowrimo.org), when people crank out a 50,000 word draft in 30 days. You don’t have to do that, but you might set up an accountability system with a friend to make sure you keep hitting your goals and she hits hers (whatever they may be).

7. Get feedback as you go. Software companies test their products by having users play around with them, so they can see what works and what doesn’t. The more people who read your chapters, the more likely they’ll be to keep you from taking a long, time-consuming detour down a road that doesn’t work.

8. Hone your book into talking points. This will keep you focused as you’re writing, and keep you from wasting time dwelling on subjects that belong in another work. Bonus: the talking points will help with promotion, when you’ll need to sound intriguing in a few sentences.

The good news about book writing is it does get easier. Your first marathon seems endless. The next one? Well, it’s just 26.2 miles. You run that by putting one foot in front of the other until you’re done. It’s the same with books. They seem daunting, but they don’t take forever. Nothing does.

Jennifer Willis

A number of years ago, when I was working full-time for a communications company and trying to make time to write a novel, Stephen Hawley Martin told me that if I got up an hour early every day to write a page of my story, in a year I’d have a first draft.

A year?

As much as I wanted to write fiction, who wants to spend an entire year working on a first draft — something that will then have to be rewritten a few times, edited, revised? And so I put off writing fiction.

It’s tough to carve time out of a busy, full-time work schedule to sit down and write fiction — it’s even worse when you’re already writing for a living, and the last thing you want to do is spend even more time in front of the computer stringing words together.

I imagine this was part of the impetus pushing Chris Baty and friends to invent National Novel Writing Month in 1999 — an insane effort to write a 50,000-word first draft in 30 days. In the twelve years since, NaNoWriMo has become an international event that takes place every November, challenging new and experienced writers around the world to write an average of 1,667 words each day. If you make it to the end, you have the first draft of a novel, ready to be picked apart for rewriting.

I’ve done NaNoWriMo every year since 2004, and it works for me. I like the competitive spirit, the cooperation and support found on the online forums, and the fact that I’m committed to a new fiction project. One of these manuscripts — my 2008 NaNoWriMo project — has recently been released as an ebook, with two more to follow this summer.

But what if you don’t want to wait until November to start your project? Or what if you can’t necessarily commit to writing every day — or nearly every day — for an entire month?

Don’t Do What I Did

First off, don’t do what I did when I wrote my first novel. Between 1999 and 2001, I wrote snippets here and there, sitting at airport gates waiting for my plane or late at night when I couldn’t sleep. I didn’t have a structure for my writing time, and I hadn’t given myself a hard deadline either. The process went on, and on, and on. Looking back, it seems a miracle that thing ever got finished.

Treat your fiction project like you would any writing assignment. Map out what needs to get done with an estimate of how long each step takes. What’s your target word count? Look at books or short stories in your genre to get a feel for how long your project should be. How many words can you write in an hour? What time can you block off — consistently — for writing, and what dedicated space can you use?

From there, set a challenging but realistic deadline — and find a way to hold yourself accountable. When you don’t have an editor breathing down your neck for your story that was due two days ago, motivation can be on the slim side. Setting up rewards for yourself — like a spa day — for meeting your deadline can be a great incentive, but sometimes you need more of a stick than a carrot. One trick Baty suggests is to make a check out to a friend for all the money you have, and post-date it for the day after your deadline. At the start of your project, give the check to your friend — with instructions to cash it if you miss the mark.

How to Create a Fiction Writing Schedule

For example, if you want to write a 7,500-word science fiction short story, and you write an average of 1,200 words per hour, you’re looking at 6.25 hours for your first draft. Also factor in research time, but don’t let yourself go overboard. One rule of thumb I’ve learned for first drafts of fiction is if you do a Google search and you can’t find what you’re looking for within three-to-five mouse clicks, leave a placeholder for the information and come back to it in the rewrite.

Let’s assume you want to spend 3.75 hours on research, giving us a nice round figure of 10 hours for your short story project. Now grab your calendar and figure out where those 10 hours are going to come from. If you’ve got every Wednesday night free — great! Block out two hours every Wednesday night for five weeks, and there’s your project time.

If you only make vague plans to “Do some writing this weekend” after all the errands are run, or wait to start writing until you “feel inspired,” you know you’re never going to do it, right?

Whatever time you can schedule, make it as consistent as you can, so you’ll get into a rhythm with your writing. And keep this time sacred, just as you wouldn’t let hell or high water keep you from a meeting with an editor from one of your dream markets. It’s way too easy to let life start to slide into your fiction time, but if you treat it like it’s any other work commitment, you’re more likely to get your project done on time.

In the end, regardless of special strategies and neat tips and tricks, it comes down to just making yourself do it. No matter how much you want to write your novel or short story, you’ll still likely find yourself procrastinating and coming up with every excuse in the book not to do it — which reminds me … when your writing time comes around, make sure you turn of the television or radio, close the door, or otherwise eliminate what is likely to distract you from your work. But just as Sting acknowledged that you have to treat songwriting as job and simply make yourself do it, the only way your fiction is going to get done is if you sit yourself down and write.

Wednesday, May 4, was the first theme day of the blogathon, where people were invited to write on the topic “My 5 favorite books on….” Here are some of the  highlights:

On Writing

Sawyer, at Some Can Whistle, included on her list several fiction writing books, and a book I hadn’t heard of on writing feature stories called Feature Writing: The Pursuit of Excellence, by Edward Jay Friendlander and John Lee.

Writer Tia Bach invited her mother and co-author Angela Silverthorne to do a guest post on their joint blog Depression Cookies called Writing Resources for the Serious Writer: 5 I Use Consistently. The post includes a couple books I’d never heard of but want to check out, including The Gregg Reference Manual by William A. Sabin, which Silverthorne calls “the writing bible” and Stein on Writing by Sol Stein, for fixing what’s wrong with your manuscript.

Barb Freda took a time out from writing about food on her blog, Babette Feasts, to write about her 5 Favorite Books on Writing. One of those is Stephen King’s writing memoir, On Writing, which almost made it onto my list.

It always surprises me when new bloggers ask what books on blogging I recommend because I automatically assume everything there is to know about blogging is online. I was wrong. John, who blogs at Writing at Gunpoint, shares a great list of books on blogging in the post, Better Blogging: 5 Books that Will Improve Your Blog. And they’re not just about blogging. His list includes everybody’s favorite Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within by Natalie Goldberg, and also Seth Godin’s inspiring Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Tess C. Taylor, who blogs at A Journey of Words, includes in her post A Copy Writer Talks about Her 5 Favorite Books of All Time one of my own childhood favorites, Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time.

And others:

• Mena Grazie, The 5 Best Books for Preternatural Writers and Role Players, The Preternatural Post
• Tara Phillips, My Top 5 Books on Writing? Are You Kidding Me?, Two Hands and a Road Map
• Jan Udlock, 5 Favorite Books, Imperfect Mom
• Alison Law, My 5 Favorite Books on Writing, Alison Law Communications
• Joan Bailey Lambert, 5 Small Book Reviews (of books that inspired my writing), Popcorn Homestead

Other Favorites

Blogathoners don’t just read books on writing. Here’s a smattering of top books lists on other subjects:

• Vicki Powers, 5 Favorite Books on Houston for Families, Houston on the Cheap
• Jennifer Woodard, My 5 Favorite Books that Were Turned into Movies, Wordzopolis
• Claudine MJ, My Favorite (Jewelry Magazine and Book) Reads, Bell Jewelry Designs (P.S. – Her jewelry designs are pretty!)
• Christine Evans, My Top 5 Craft Books, 52 Crafts in 52 Weeks
• Julia Biggs, My 5 Favorite Websites, Aunty JuJu’s Perspective
• Pavithra Kodmad, My 5 Favorite TV Shows, Pavithra Kodmad’s Pages
• Christine, My 5 Favorite Books, Inspired Life
• Melissa Oakes, 5 Must-Have Gardening Books, Gardening-4-Life
• Kathleen Murray, More Great China Books, That China Girl

I’ve spent a lot of time in the air in recent weeks, which has given me the chance to partake in a pleasure I have too little time for in my everyday life – books.

Here are a few books that I’ve started, am in the middle of or finished. Though they’re on completely different subjects, all feature writing that’s well above average and definitely worth checking out for the language or style alone. I’m a die-hard fiction reader, but lately my tastes have turned to nonfiction, and all of these are of that genre:

Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues, and Becoming a Star in Beijing – After freelance basketball and music writer Alan Paul became what’s known in expat circles as a “trailing spouse,” moving to China so his wife could become the Wall Street Journal‘s Beijing bureau chief,  he started a blog and column about his life there and at the same time started an Anglo-Chinese blues band, and was more successful in each than he ever dreamed. In time, Woodie Alan, the group Paul started with Chinese bandmate Woodie Wu, became one of the city’s hottest blues acts, and his expat columns for the Journal won him accolades as the paper’s columnist of the year. Paul recounts it all in Big in China, published this month by HarperCollins and written in such vivid style it made me hungry for the cheap Chinese noodles he writes about slurping down so regularly. My only quibble: that the book didn’t include pictures of the band or a CD of their music. News Flash: It looks like I’m not the only one taken with Paul’s memoir. According to just-published news reports, Montecito Pictures has optioned the picture as a possible vehicle for director Ivan Reitman. You can read Paul’s behind-the-scenes account of how the book was born in this piece on Huffington Post.

The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine - Best-selling business journalist Michael Lewis picks up in The Big Short, published last year, where he left off two decades ago in Liar’s Poker to tell the tale of the country’s recent financial crisis and collapse of the real-estate market from the viewpoint of some of the insiders who made it happen. And an idiosyncratic bunch they are, including the tell-it-like-it-is money manager who famously shorted subprime home mortgages and the doctor turned investor who was one of the first in the world to recognize the impending mortgage crisis. You don’t need to be a Wall Street trader or have an MBA to appreciate Lewis’ ability to weave a complex narrative through the stories of the people involved.

The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife – Funny, it never occurred to me until now that all three of these sections have “Big” in the title – I guess “Big” is big. Civic Venture founder and pioneering encore careers proponent Marc Freedman uses his latest book to discuss why America (if not the world) needs to start thinking differently about its 45+ citizens so governments and social institutions can do a better of job helping them navigate the new stage between midlife and old age. I’ve interviewed Freedman for SecondAct, and The Big Shift, to be published next month by Public Affairs, mirrors what he’s told me in person about why the world’s thinking about boomers – and almost boomers – is all wrong and what needs to change. It’s a smart read on a timely subject.