One of my favorite websites is called Reading California Fiction. It is hosted by Typepad and was written entirely by my friend Don Napoli. Sadly, Don died at age 79 in early 2021. The site is no longer updated. I don’t know if anyone has archived it. It lives on for now but may vanish at any time. Don was a native of Michigan who came to California in 1960. He found himself working at the State Library in Sacramento. When he informed one of his supervisors that he really didn’t know much about California, the supervisor suggested he try reading Raymond Chandler’s books. Don followed this advice and became hooked on California fiction. He made it his mission to read as much California fiction as possible and write about it for posterity. Reading all of the fiction ever written about the Golden State would have been impossible, however, so Don set a few limits on his project. He decided he would write only about books that had been written before 1960, were set in California sometime between 1890 and 1959, were readily available in at least 800 libraries worldwide, and were written by authors who had lived during the era their novels described (in other words, he wasn’t interested in a historical novel set in 1890s Los Angeles but written by someone born in 1910). Don cheerfully admitted that his parameters were fairly random. If I tried to get him to write about Jessamyn West’s brilliant novel The Life I Really Lived, which was published in the 1970s but set, partially, in the Southern California of the 20s and 30s, he would simply laugh off the suggestion. He had his rules and he followed them to the letter. I miss Don a lot but browsing through his website and reading some of the hundreds of reviews posted there always makes me feel as if he is still around somewhere, still reading and writing about California.
WANDA AND MARIA: A TALE OF TWO STORMS
WANDA AND MARIA: A TALE OF TWO STORMS
WANDA AND MARIA: A TALE OF TWO STORMS
One of my favorite websites is called Reading California Fiction. It is hosted by Typepad and was written entirely by my friend Don Napoli. Sadly, Don died at age 79 in early 2021. The site is no longer updated. I don’t know if anyone has archived it. It lives on for now but may vanish at any time. Don was a native of Michigan who came to California in 1960. He found himself working at the State Library in Sacramento. When he informed one of his supervisors that he really didn’t know much about California, the supervisor suggested he try reading Raymond Chandler’s books. Don followed this advice and became hooked on California fiction. He made it his mission to read as much California fiction as possible and write about it for posterity. Reading all of the fiction ever written about the Golden State would have been impossible, however, so Don set a few limits on his project. He decided he would write only about books that had been written before 1960, were set in California sometime between 1890 and 1959, were readily available in at least 800 libraries worldwide, and were written by authors who had lived during the era their novels described (in other words, he wasn’t interested in a historical novel set in 1890s Los Angeles but written by someone born in 1910). Don cheerfully admitted that his parameters were fairly random. If I tried to get him to write about Jessamyn West’s brilliant novel The Life I Really Lived, which was published in the 1970s but set, partially, in the Southern California of the 20s and 30s, he would simply laugh off the suggestion. He had his rules and he followed them to the letter. I miss Don a lot but browsing through his website and reading some of the hundreds of reviews posted there always makes me feel as if he is still around somewhere, still reading and writing about California.