![]() ![]() Many books on my “RESEARCH” shelves here were absolute keepers: Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste hand surgeon Paul Brand’s memoir The Gift of Pain Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh and Douglas Stuart’s Shuggie Bain, to name just a few. “Research” is the writer’s guilt-free method of not writing. I began the trimming with the shelves I labeled “RESEARCH” that held the many books I’d read in aid of my novel, which is set in India and Glasgow. I hoped it would be the necessary cure for what ailed me. The pruning task over many weeks would turn out to be a self-examination, a means of retooling and reinvention. In the lull following its departure, I had felt lost. ![]() Earlier in the year, my novel-the labor of nearly a decade-finally went off to the printers with a launch date set for May 2023. As with prize-winning rose bushes or facial hair, periodic pruning is necessary. I stood gazing at this chronicle of my reading history. ![]() I only keep those that I want to return to for inspiration, for memorable passages, for technique… or sometimes in the hope that by cradling a volume its magic rubs off on me. As 2022 wound down, once again the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that cover every wall in my study groaned with more volumes than they could hold. ![]()
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