December's What are you reading?

Holiday edition

Jack Ryan was a voracious reader and took weekly trips to Medway Public Library. He’d return home with four or five books and devour them within seven days. In his youth, he read many of the classics in an attempt to climb to a higher station in life. In the last decades, though, he preferred more formulaic novels (Tom Clancy, Robert Parker, Tony Hillerman, etc), always by men. Always.

”Why don’t you read any women authors, Dad?”

”Because they write differently—especially characters. I can just tell.”

”Really?”

”Think about it,” he said. “Who are your favorite authors? Any women?”

He made his point, but in all fairness to women writers, I was not much of a reader—nothing like I’ve become over the last twenty years.

But since that conversation, I’ve made it a point to champion women who capture my reading heart.

Do women write differently? Not sure. But I now could spend an afternoon telling Jack about my favorite authors—many of whom are women.

I think about that now and again, and I’m th…