Her entry begins:I'm usually reading two or three books at a time.Among the early praise for Easy for You:
There's the book I read to get better, a book I want to study, to help me figure something out in my own writing. Right now that book is We Tell Ourselves Stories in Order to Live--the collected nonfiction of Joan Didion. Her language is both sparse and full. Like this line from "Some Dreamers of the Golden Dream": "January 11, 1965, was a bright warm day in Southern California, the kind of day when Catalina floats on the Pacific horizon and the air smells of orange blossom and it is a long way from the bleak and and difficult East, a long way from the cold, a long way from the past."
I love everything about this sentence. I want to be inside of it. I think Didion is a master at that, using words to...[read on]
Read an excerpt from Easy for You and visit Shannan Rouss' website.“Shannan Rouss is an important new voice, just when we need her. This book is fun and smart, worldly and amiable, savvy and just plain great—the perfect companion.”—Darin Strauss, author of Chang and Eng and More Than It Hurts You
"Reading this collection feels like unwrapping presents, each more enchanting than the last. These stories are crisp, witty, tender, sad, and altogether delightful.”
—Brian Morton, author of Starting Out in the Evening and Breakable You
Shannan Rouss is a third generation Angeleno who moved to New York, but never really left L.A. She is a former staff writer at Self, and has contributed to Cosmopolitan, Glamour, and Nylon. She is currently the editor of Vital Juice New York, a daily email newsletter and website. She lives in Brooklyn.
Writers Read: Shannan Rouss.
--Marshal Zeringue
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