What is Gwendolyn Womack reading?

Featured at Writers Read: Gwendolyn Womack, author of The Memory Painter.

Her entry begins:

I tend to read a lot of nonfiction for story research but I try to break for some purely leisure reading when I can. Recently, I finished Publishing by Gail Godwin, which was a fascinating look at her experiences through the years in the publishing industry.

And currently I’m reading two books at the same time, something I actually never do but somehow it’s happened and I love them both. The first is All The Light We Cannot See, which everyone has already read but me. Anthony Doerr’s writing is transcendent, illuminating and filled with such beauty and precision that sometimes passages have me holding my breath. I’m also reading...[read on]

About The Memory Painter, from the publisher:

What if there was a drug that could help you remember past lives?
What if the lives you remembered could lead you to your one true love?
What if you learned that, for thousands of years, a deadly enemy had conspired to keep the two of you apart?

Bryan Pierce is an internationally famous artist whose paintings have dazzled the world. But there's a secret to his success: Every canvas is inspired by an unusually vivid dream. When Bryan awakes, he possesses extraordinary new skills...like the ability to speak obscure languages and an inexplicable genius for chess. All his life, he has wondered if his dreams are recollections, if he is re-experiencing other people's lives.Linz Jacobs is a brilliant neurogeneticist, absorbed in decoding the genes that help the brain make memories, until she is confronted with an exact rendering of a recurring nightmare at one of Bryan's shows. She tracks down the elusive artist, and their meeting triggers Bryan's most powerful dream yet: visions of a team of scientists who, on the verge of discovering a cure for Alzheimer's, died in a lab explosion decades ago.As Bryan becomes obsessed with the mysterious circumstances surrounding the scientists' deaths, his dreams begin to reveal what happened at the lab, as well as a deeper mystery that may lead all the way to ancient Egypt. Together, Bryan and Linz start to discern a pattern. But a deadly enemy watches their every move, and he will stop at nothing to ensure that the past stays buried.A taut thriller and a timeless love story spanning six continents and 10,000 years of history, The Memory Painter by Gwendolyn Womack is a riveting debut novel unlike any you've ever read.

Visit Gwendolyn Womack's website.

Writers Read: Gwendolyn Womack.

--Marshal Zeringue