Jo-Ann Mapson

Snuggled up between the covers

It was hot this summer, both here and abroad, but I spent much of it snuggled up between the covers-the covers of good books. My passion for reading began with my mom, who read to me the year I was six and confined to bed, under quarantine for scarlet fever and double pneumonia. Can you say cooties deluxe? That sounds downright gothic as I type out the words, but what I remember of that time is her lilting voice reciting poems and reading me stories.

My mother took us kids to the library once a week. She checked out her own books, too, and when she offered one of them to me or my sisters, it was as if she were sharing her secrets-which dresses needed a string of pearls, or how to put on eye shadow without looking like Elvira. Guys bond over baseball scores, and play catch with their fathers, but for my mom and me, it was always books. She shared Daphne DuMaurier, Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, Elisabeth Ogilvie, and Jane Austen, women writers. I have no idea where she managed to work reading into her days. We ran her ragged, complained when we didn't like the dinner she cooked, whined about having to wax floors and iron shirts and pillowcases, made her drive us to the store, and argued when she put her foot down about anything. Sometimes she'd set the ironing board up in front of the television and watched Rat Patrol or Star Trek . I probably had the only mom who admitted she liked Star Trek , and I didn't even know how cool that was because I was like all kids, selfish, with "lame" parents.

By the time TV got any good- Mr. Ed, Bewitched, Dark Shadows --I was already a confirmed reader. Current TV has its moments- Six Feet Under, Sex and the City, The Sopranos , and my personal fave, The Osbournes -but for me it will never take the place of a good book. Anyone who reads knows the high a book can deliver. It's that moment when you are so lost in the story the rest of the world disappears. And there's this little buzz in your brain-if you think about it, it will disappear. While it's happening, it's wonderful. When it stops, you miss it. But just exactly how do writers do that? Transport the reader faster than the Concorde to a fabricated world that lives and breathes and makes the reader believe?

Talking to my editor one afternoon in New York, she began to gently prod me as to what book I'd be writing next. I had a stock answer, a book already outlined, and an idea for the one after that. That next one , I said, was going to be my epic. Her eyes lit up-it's every editor's dream to hear those words. I told her I wasn't ready, that I needed to research for at least a year, blah blah blah, and she nodded, showing no disappointment whether she felt it or not.

When I returned to Alaska, I scrapped the outlined book and began writing the epic.

It's hard starting to write any book, but this one seemed to give me uber fits. My writing pal, author Jodi Picoult (who'll be reading at Title Wave and giving a craft workshop at UAA this month-don't miss her!) critiqued my first efforts and showed me where the book actually started-after I cut away the throat-clearing stuff it was obvious. And my friend Joyce Weatherford, who wrote the wonderful first novel, Heart of the Beast , said she'd always heard that the first line of a book should tell its subject, and the first paragraph should end with the implied ending of the book. Who knows if that's so, but once I engineered things to reflect that, I was off and running.

It's ironic that as I finish this column I'm sick in bed with a cough and the flu. No quarantine this time, however, and only my dogs want to tell me stories. I'm starting to realize that to write every book as if it is my epic, as if it is the only possible repository for the human heart, is the way to proceed.

Here's a list of some of my favorite summer reads:

His Mother's Son -Cai Emmons

Revenge of the Middle-Aged Woman -Elizabeth Buchan

The novels of Irish writer Cathy Kelly (did them all!)

Distant Shores -Kristin Hannah

Isabel's Daughter -Judith Ryan Hendricks

Perfect Match -Jodi Picoult

Sunshine and Shadow- Earlene Fowler

Food and Loathing -Betsy Lerner

Big Stone Gap -Adriana Trigiani

Big Cherry Holler -Adriana Trigiani

Atonement -Ian McEwen

Irish Trees: Myths, Legends, & Folklore -Niall Mac Coitir

Isle of Palms -Dorothea Benton Frank

Probable Future -Alice Hoffman

*The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency -Andrew McCall Smith

*Tears of the Giraffe -Andrew McCall Smith

(*These last 2 are really a treat.)

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