Book Talk: Wilma Doane podcast

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Wilma Doane, a resident of Ridgefield, is an avid book lover. She reads two to three books a week and makes a point to indulge in “cheap entertainment,” buying a hardback book when it includes an event with the author.

Wilma Doane and Harlan Coben

Wilma Doane chats with author Harlan Coben at the Poisoned Pen bookstore. Photo: Ken Doane.

Last year, she received a Kindle for Christmas. She hasn’t completely warmed to the concept of electronic books, saying that it’s not that “easy to share books in the same way it is when you can hand off a paperbook or a hardback.” She also laments the difficulty of knowing how close you are to the end of a good book. But she laughs at her transition between the paper and electronic world.

“When I first started using it (the Kindle), I found myself getting my hand ready to turn the page.”

After reading all those books, Doane noticed a trend in authors that she appreciates, combining research of current events to create suspense novels. One of her recent favorites underscored the unsupervised, yet federally funded, wind farms in Wyoming.

“The mystery was woven around all this very relevant, current information, which makes those kind of books interesting to read, besides the mystery [and] wondering what will happen at the end.”

Doane wouldn’t call herself a writer, but during her career as an escrow officer in the title insurance industry she had plenty of opportunity to write. Her development of the company’s first escrow manual became an important training resource.

“When I worked, a lot of my writing was technical writing – writing something so somebody else could understand about something.”

Outside of work, her writing was more inward focused. “When you have something that’s troubling you, if you can write it out, it’s very therapeutic.”

Wilma Doane's memoire.

Wilma Doane's memoire. Photo: Kailynn Doane.

While Doane says she never thought about writing a book, she did compile a spiral-bound notebook of her life’s journey and shared her memoir with family members as a holiday present.

Today, Wilma Doane is retired and loves the freedom of not having deadlines, she says, “Except the ones I create for myself.”

 

 


A podcast of our interview with Wilma Doane is at the top of this post.

Book Talk is new audio program from COUV.COM.
It’s a conversation about books and people who love them.

COUV.COM asks:
Has anyone in your family written a memoir?

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