Sunday, June 19, 2011

My Guest Reader: By her Garden Pond Gisela Sherman Reads The Lacuna by Barbara Kingsolver



Let me just introduce my guest reader/blogger today.  You have to run to the library and get King of the ClassSnake in the Toilet, or my personal favourite Grave Danger,  Gisela Tobien Sherman wrote those.
One of the things you might not know about Gisela is that, besides being able to bring words to life, she can coax herbs, vegetables, flowers and trees into a much richer more colourful life.  If you step into her lush green garden you will hear the water babbling, too.  Ahhh!  Here's what she says about where and what she's reading:


In my garden, with pond and flowers, reading The Lacuna. Barbara Kingsolver is one of my favourite authors. Her use of language is brilliant and beautiful. Loved her Poisonwood Bible, and especially Prodigal Summer.  Lacuna's first chapter was a work of art. The book was a bit harder to get into than her others, but ended up fascinating me. It wove the lives of the fictitious writer Harrison Shepherd, with artists Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, the final days of Leon Trotsky in Mexico and his betrayal by Stalin, and showed how easily a life could be destroyed in the McCarthy Era. So many gems of wisdom and perception. "Don't just listen to what someone says, pay attention to what is left out," has stayed with me.



2 comments:

Gisela Sherman said...

Thanks for the compliments, Sylvia.
Just to make it easier to find my books, my name is Gisela Tobien Sherman.

Sylvia McNicoll said...

Fixed it. You'd think after so many years, I'd know it. I just read the books, don't look at the bylines.