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Guest Take Out List - Author, Susan Vreeland
WHOSE WORK DO I ADMIRE?    A WRITER'S LIST
I cherish certain parts of books by many authors and for a variety of reasons:

	For the capacity to tell a tale of action as well as contemplation, delivering an intricate plot, vivid detail, complex characters, and spiritual substance, Ahab's Wife, by Sena Jeter Naslund.
	For the ability to draw me into an unfamiliar world and make me care deeply about its people, for making a bland, socially inept bungler sympathetic and appealing, The Shipping News by Annie Proulx.
	For lush sensuousness of scene under the cedar between innocent youth on the brink of the moral eruption of their heretofore unmarked lives, and for twists of plot, Snow Falling on Cedars by David Guterson.
	For natural and transparent expression of emotion, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce.
	For seemingly effortless, rolling description allowing me to see a moving, peopled landscape, All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy.
	For the power to create loveable characters I want to throw my arms around, and honorable ones I want to emulate, and for its gentle teaching of humanitarian values, To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee.
	For sophistication and complexity of narrative structure, for subtle connective tissue, and for sheer beauty of sentences, The Hours by Michael Cunningham.
	For density, language, cumulative imagery, and new discoveries every time I read it, Hamlet.
	And for the pure joy of storytelling, everything by John Steinbeck.