Run by Daisy Whitney at daisywhitney.com

Recommendation by Theresa Shaw…

“Wishful Drinking” is a memoir — however fans of chick lit and aspiring writers alike, should break from their fiction reading and spend two hours reading Carrie Fisher’s latest (and shortest) book. Why? Because Carrie Fisher is far more interesting than any fictional character out there and a helluva a writer to boot. Her real life has been fictionalized in her four novels, the most famous of which is probably “Postcards from the Edge.” “Wishful Drinking” is more like a look at through a tattered scrapbook as some of her memories have recently been erased thanks to electric shock therapy treatment. Fisher’s wit allows her to turn the pain of the most un-normal of circumstances — growing up as the child of two Hollywood icons, being put to work in the chorus of her mom’s stage show, her various addictions, marriage to a musical genius, marriage to a gay Hollywood mega agent, waking up in bed next to a dead gay Republican (who used to share an office with George W. Bush) — into a laugh out loud fest. If some could guarantee me that being a bipolar, manic depressive, alcoholic could make my own writing just a tenth as interesting as Fisher’s, hell, I’d become one tomorrow.

Verdict: Read now.

At first I was a little apprehensive about reading a novel written in verse, like Lisa Schroeder’s Far From You. There’s nothing wrong with verse, it’s just different. And I wasn’t sure how I felt about different. But now I know how I feel because different is very good in this case. Lisa Schroeder is a lyrical writer — that’s probably why she writes in verse. What she can do with two words most writers would need twenty. Somehow, she manages to create intricate relationships, delicate storylines and complicated characters who all tug at your heart in this story about a teenager who loses her mother to cancer, shuts her new step-mom out and then must come to terms with her loss and her life going forward in the midst of a deadly snowstorm. You can feel, sense and imagine every instant, every second in this novel, so artful is Ms. Schroeder in the few words she uses. The other benefit of reading a novel written in verse is it’s reward — you can finish it easily in just a few hours and be richer for it.

I have a big thing for ghost love stories. I think it’s the inherent impossibility of the relationship. Right? I mean a human and a ghost can’t really be together in meaningful way. In Lisa Schroeder’s young adult novel I Heart You, You Haunt Me, Ava is haunted by the notion that she was responsible for her boyfriend’s death, then she’s haunted by him. He appears in mirrors, turns on music, and even tosses her panties around. But she can’t see him, can’t touch, can’t feel him, she can’t even hear him. She loves that he’s near and that a part of him hasn’t gone to the grave because she’s still desperately in love with him. But alas, loving a ghost isn’t easy. But reading this novel is. It’s written in verse, is wonderfully short, and can be read and savored all in a day.