So Many Books…Only Two Eyes Saturday, Dec 20 2008

     Most of my friends have a stack of books somewhere, unread, full of interesting things, waiting to be cracked. I am notorious for this now that I have discovered a half price bookstore mere minutes from my home. Everything’s half off! Or used! Why not spend $15 and get five books?

     The problem is…I read kind of slowly. Well, comparitively slowly. Husband is a superspeed reader with a crazy photographic memory. I get distracted – with the use of language, with imagining some subplot, with weather the cover art was really appropriate. But I am a confirmed bookworm, word nerd, reader and bibliophile.

     What’s on my bookshelf right now? Let’s see…

     I’m 1/8 of the way through David Foster Wallace’s The Broom of the System

     The Best American Non-Required Reading of 2008, a recent gift from Husband and one of my fave series

     Garlic and Sapphires, by Ruth Reichl, because she’s been recommended to me and also I like food writing

     Little Flowers of Francis of Assisi, a collection of tales from the life of St. Francis of Assisi

     Interworld, by (cue angel choir) Neil Gaiman because it was $5 in hardback and I’ve never read it

     Postcards from the Edge, by Carrie Fisher – this was a $1 and I’ve never read her before

    Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver, which I haven’t read because I read Omnivore’s Dilemma and needed some time to digest it (no pun intended)

     The Four Agreements, recommended by my sister

     The last couple Dresden Files books are floating around here, having been devoured by Husband already

         That’s a big stack. Better get to it.

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Baaad English Major Thursday, Oct 16 2008

   Everybody knows that English major type who can quote famous authors verbatim. At the end of the night your buddy, who has been drunkenly hitting on all the women at the party and bragging about his novel that’s about to be published, turns to the crowd and charmingly slurs, “If we shadows have offended, think but this, and all is mended”* and everybody laughs and forgets he’s kind of a dork. Or your girlfriend says coyly, “Let us go then, you and I, when the evening is spread out against the sky”** and she sounds kind of sexy.
   I can’t do this. The only literature or quote I have memorized is “The Jabberwoky” from Lewis Carroll and that’s only because a summer theater program I was in when I was 12 performed it.

     The best I can do is say something like, “Didn’t Thoreau say something about a pond and how it’s like a long life and then…oh, I forget how it goes.”

     The English majors I know are always pulling out perfect quotes and themes and concepts from our long work as English majors. They got something out of those years with their noses in books – or at least they remember more of it than I do.

     When I read a book, it goes into the category of LIKED and DIDN’T LIKE. *** I remember the major plot points. Sometimes I remember something funny or a funny scene. I have read exactly one Thomas Pynchon book, The Crying of Lot 49, and I remember this: they’re playing strip Botticelli in the bathroom and the hairspray can is flying around the room.

     Other people have a maddening capacity for recollection. Husband, for example, remembers everything he reads and he reads really fast. I read slowly, and I barely remember what I read two pages ago. Other people remember who said what - Woolf and Dostoevsky, Dunne and Yeats, Dickens, Dickinson, Shelley, Kerouac, and O’Connor. I can’t remember what happens in The Faerie Queen or why I should remember it. I’ve read The Canterbury Tales three times for school and…well…there was a mooning scene, right?

    What the heck was I doing with my English major? And what was I reading? I think of all the books in the English major’s literary arsenal, I come up short on the side of ones I’ve read. I don’t think the Dresden Files are going to make it into college classrooms anytime soon.  It all makes me feel like a bad English major. Like I should remember more about the great literature I studied for so long.

     There’s just so bloody much to read!  

 

*I had to look this quote up to get the words right.

**10 points to you if you can finish the simile.

***My apologies to all my grad school professors who said that it no longer mattered if you like the book, we’re not reading for plot, and can you please just give me a Marxist critique of this novel?

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100 Words #5: Reading List and Inspiration Wednesday, May 7 2008

As a writer, you have to fill your muse tank. If you keep pouring out your creativity and inspiration onto the page, you won’t have much to draw from. I don’t think we all have a mystical well of inspiration in the backyard. (IF you do, can you please invite me to see it?) You have to stop and refill with some outside inspirations. I read books and magazines, listen to podcasts and keep my eyes out for anything I can use. So I want to talk about books I have found helpful with writing.  I don’t think you have to be a writer to enjoy these books. Perhaps you might get more out of them if you are a writer and/or fan of these particular authors.

On Writing by Stephen King – I’m not a huge King reader because I read at night and if I read King well, then I wouldn’t sleep much, but I have read some of his stuff. I admire much of his work and I appreciated this book’s look at his process.

Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott - I need to re-read this one. I remember reading it and really liking it, but I can’t remember…why…except that it’s funny which always scores points with me.

Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg – Read this in high school and I think it was a great introduction to Books on Writing. I preferred this over Wild Mind and Thunder and Lightning, but they are all solid picks for me.

The Right to Write by Julia Cameron – I’m sort of on the fence about this one. After being touted as a great resource for writers, I wanted to come away like “ROWR I’M GOING TO WIN AT WRITING!!!” I more felt like I had a few more tools to work with. Not saying that’s a bad thing.

In the last few years I’ve been getting into the Best American series of Essays and Non-Required Reading.

Recently, I’ve been listening to the I Should be Writing and Writers in the Sky podcasts. I downloaded a couple of other podcasts from another show and will report on those forthwith.

On deck are Storyteller by Kate Wilhelm and The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron.  

If you’re a writer, what have you read that you recommend? How do you refill your muse tank?

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100 Words: #5 – Writing Monday, May 5 2008

Yesterday, I bought some writing stuff. (I get to write off the writing stuff on my taxes next year, which I think is kind of cool, since it’s technically a business for me.) I bought Julia Cameron’s “The Artist’s Way” workbook, a blank journal, and good ol’ Strunk & White.  I love new notebooks. They are empty, but still full of the potential and promise of wonderful things. For that reason, they also overwhelm me. What if Idon’t write something amazing in there? What if I don’t fill it up? (I never fill them up…)

I have been listening to a podcast that I love and recommend to writers. “I Should Be Writing” has really helped motivate me to get back to writing and try to make a go of it.  I like it because Mur, the hostess, has a great attitude about writing. She doesn’t proclaim to be the best, an expert, or to even know what she’s talking about. A testament to her podcasting skillz is that she is a sci-fi/fantasy writer and I’m not but I still get a lot out of her podcast.

I’ve decided that I might have a novel in me. I meet people all the time, and been in classes with people, who are sooo confident they have the next great American novel in them – and they really don’t. But I have a story that I’ve been kicking around for a while. If you’ve ever been in a writing class with me, you won’t be surprised to know that it’s based on a Tori Amos song. I haven’t finished the short story I’m writing yet, but when I do, I think it might be time to start my own novel. I will keep you posted when I do.

This hundred words thing has kind of been working out well. It makes me think of my deal with myself at the gym. I only have to do 20 minutes on the days I don’t feel like working out. Just go, get on the treadmill and do 20 minutes. I’ve never yet stopped after 20 minutes, I always do an hour. So like writing here, if I just have to do 100 words, it’s easy to do 300.

Also, I’ve just finished a book. It’s called “Firethorn.” Now, I have to say I just picked it up at the library because it had a nice cover. A guy I used to be friends with always said that those companies who publish books do a lot of research on what *I’d* like and so he doesn’t feel bad about buying books based on the covers. The book is a fantasy/romance novel. It turned out to be not my cup of tea. My feeling is that this book had plenty going on but it was all monotone. Even the sex (and there was plenty of that, too) was one note. I didn’t love it. I did finish it, though.  BUT…it also turns out that it is a trilogy. 

Do I read the others? I haven’t decided.

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