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Spiked with suspense that builds toward inevitable disaster, this gripping story of the ill-fated luxury liner, Lusitania, demonstrates once again Larson's unparalleled skill at narrative history. For all of us who waited in anticipation of his next book, Dead Wake does not disappoint. Books mentioned in this post Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the... [...]

I've been a fan of Erik Larson's riveting brand of narrative history for years, and his latest book, Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, is his finest work yet. Suspenseful and expertly researched, Dead Wake transports the reader to the Atlantic theatre of WWI, where the luxury passenger liner Lusitania and a German [...]

Author Erik Larson has selected The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett for The Wall Street Journal‘s book club read this month.

“It is the ultimate detective novel, and frankly not just detective novel,” Larson told The Wall Street Journal. \"I think it’s one of the best novels, period… Here’s this writer, here’s Hammett, who in 217 pages creates this world with four of the absolutely most vivid characters that literature, I think, has ever come up with.\"

Readers are invited to read along and join weekly discussions on the blog, Speakeasy and on WSJ.com/bookclub, as well as through discussions on Facebook page and Twitter via #WSJbookclub.

Erik Larson Photo © Benjamin Benschneider

This week, I finished Erik Larson’s latest narrative nonfiction, In the Garden of Beasts, which is still dominating The New York Times bestseller list. Excellent read.

A few years back, I got in touch with Larson (who also wrote the spectacular Devil in the White City) to see if he would like to contribute a list on the writing life for a feature we were putting together. After finishing Beasts, I went on a hunt for the piece and realized it’s not online—so I’ve dug it up to share with anyone who might have missed it. I maintain that his tenth point is still one of my favorite things we’ve printed in the last few years.

Happy Friday.

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Erik Larson: Top 10 Essentials to a Writer’s Life

1. Good Coffee: Every writer has a ritual that begins the day. It’s like turning a key to start your car. For me, the key that starts the day is a good cup of coffee, preferably Peet’s Coffee.

2. More Coffee: Alas, I drink as many as five cups a day. And then switch to tea. My teeth are the color of plum-tree leaves.

3. Oreo Cookies: I mean, look, if you have a cup of good coffee, you need an Oreo. Some mornings—the tough ones—I define as two-Oreo days. Double Stuf preferred.

4. A Sense of Pace: Many writers make the mistake of engaging in what I call “binge writing.” They write for 10 hours straight, riding the perfect wave of inspiration. The problem is, you still need to wake up the next day and do it again. Best is to pace yourself. Write for three hours straight, without interruption, then stop.

5. Knowing Where to Stop: My favorite “trick” is to stop writing at a point where I know that I can pick up easily the next day. I’ll stop in mid-paragraph, often in mid-sentence. It makes getting out of bed so much easier, because I know that all I’ll have to do to be productive is complete the sentence. And by then I’ll be seated at my desk, coffee and Oreo cookie at hand, the morning’s inertia overcome. There’s an added advantage: The human brain hates incomplete sentences. All night my mind will have secretly worked on the passage and likely mapped out the remainder of the page, even the chapter, while simultaneously sending me on a dinner date with Cate Blanchett.

6. Blocks of Undisturbed Time: I set aside a minimum of three hours every morning, seven days a week, during which no one is allowed to intrude except to report an approaching cruise missile.

7. Physical Diversion: When I stop writing, I need an escape—something that takes me out of the work and wholly into another realm. My main diversion is tennis, though I also find cooking to be very helpful. Something about chopping onions is very restorative. Dogs are helpful, too. They force you to go outside and confront the weather, although my dog did once eat a 19th-century edition of a British physicist’s autobiography.

8. A Good Library: For all writers, but especially those of us who write  nonfiction, a good library with open stacks is crucial.

9. A Trusted Reader: Every writer I know has at least one friend or partner who can be trusted to read early drafts of a book and provide an accurate, constructive critique. My secret weapon is my wife, who annotates the margins of my drafts with crying faces, smiles and long receding lines of zzzzzzzzzzzs.

10. A Fireplace: One of the most important

Two huge special events are just around the corner – do you have your tickets yet?

Renowned historical non-fiction author Erik Larson will be joining us on Friday, May 4. His new book, In the Garden of Beasts, is set in Germany in 1933, when a benign man named William E. Dodd took his post as United States ambassador, just as Adolf Hitler began his rise to power. The book tells Dodd’s story, as well as the story of his unfaithful wife – and the impeccably researched story of Hitler’s Germany before World War II.

Thurber Prize for American Humor winner Christopher Buckley is a brilliant political satirist. He will return to the Thurber House stage on Wednesday, May 16. His newest work of satire, They Eat Puppies, Don’t They?, features a Washington lobbyist and his female aide who start a rumor that the Chinese secret service is planning to assassinate the Dalai Lama, in order to push a top secret weapons system through Congress. The series of events that follow are vintage Buckley.

Both events will be held at the Columbus Museum of Art, 480 E. Broad Street. A wine and hors d’oeuvres reception for limited guests will be held before each reading, and tickets are available for the reception and reading, or the reading only. Ready to purchase your ticket before they are sold out? Click here!

Erik Larson's next book, scheduled for publication in 2015, is tentatively titled "Sea of Secrets."

Universal Studios has acquired the movie rights for In the Garden of Beasts: Love, Terror and an American Family in Hitler’s Berlin by Erik Larson.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Oscar winner Tom Hanks and his producing partner Gary Goetzman may produce the project. Hanks could star in the movie as well.

Here’s more from the article: “The book tells the true tale of William Dodd, the United States’ reluctant and mild-mannered ambassador to Berlin in 1933, and his daughter Martha, a vivacious socialite who had romantic affairs with a Gestapo official and a Soviet spy.”

continued…

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Oscar-nominated actress Julianne Moore, Emmy-nominated comedian Mindy Kaling, and journalist Jim Lehrer will host breakfast events at this year’s Book Expo America.

Moore, author of picture book Freckleface Strawberry, will preside over the children’s writers’ breakfast. Kaling (a writer at The Office)  and Lehrer (author of both fiction and nonfiction) will host two adult writers’ breakfasts.

Here’s more from the press release: “The other speakers who will be joining the hosts for these popular events include Sarah Dessen, Roger Ebert, Anne Enright, Jefferey Eugenides, Charlaine Harris, Kevin Henkes, Diane Keaton, Erik Larson, and Brian Selznick.  In addition, Katherine Paterson, who is the current Ambassador for Young People’s Literature, will be saying a few words at the Children’s Breakfast on behalf of the Children’s Book Council.”

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.

Leonardo DiCaprio will play a real-life 19th Century serial killer in an upcoming adaptation of Erik Larson‘s book, The Devil in the White City.

Here’s more from the release: “[T]he film follows both the planning and execution of the mass murders, which take place during the city’s most profound moment on the world’s stage.In the film, DiCaprio plays the murder-minded H.H. Holmes, a cavalier charlatan who takes advantage of somewhere between 27 and 200 people, mostly single young women, to develop a lucrative personal cadaver-disposal system.”

Deadline Hollywood has more about the deal, including some back-story about Tom Cruise‘s attempt to mount a production of the book. Although best known for this book, Larson is also the author of a number of nonfiction books, including Lethal Passage: The Story of a Gun, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History, and Thunderstruck.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.