Great book for writers.

I love the book shelf at the Goodwill store. Not only do I save a few bucks, which is near and dear to my skinflint heart, but I also encounter books that I would never know otherwise. Recently I discovered a copy of Letters to a young novelist by Mario Vargas Llosa. I've long been a fan of Rilke's Letters to a young poet but this book is almost as good as its namesake.

This book expresses the author's views on the craft of fiction which he illustrates with examples from a wide range of classic and contemporary novels. Llosa believes that authors are inherently rebels. That writers rebel against a reality that we don't accept by creating an alternate reality of our own. Another image likens an author's burning desire to write to a tapeworm. True writers constantly need to write to feed the "tapeworm" eating at our insides.

This book is available at Amazon and other sources. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in writing.

Keep the words and your creative juices flowing.

Jim Busch