More on Books
(Or,
If My Brain Were Part of a Car, It Would Probably Be the Alternator)
Recently, I decided that I wanted to start reading again. I hadn't stopped, exactly, but I wasn't going through books as voraciously or continually as I used to, and I missed it.
For me, a lot of reading is about momentum (writing, too--in fact, I tend to approach them in a fairly similar range of ways). One of my good friends and on-and-off correspondents also happens to be one of my favorite writers, and our taste in and standards for books have thus far tended to overlap quite a lot, so I asked him to recommend a handful of really absorbing books I could use to jump-start my reading.
He sent a list of some seventy novels, NF books, and comics,* which I've been gradually working my way through ever since. I'm taking it slowly, but steadily.
Here's what I've finished from the list so far (not counting the half dozen that I already happened to have read):
The Stranger, by Albert Camus (I read about a quarter of this while stuck in an elevator, which was amusingly apropos to the section I was on at the time.)
Cruddy, by Lynda Barry
White Noise, by Don DeLillo (I'd gotten about a third of the way through this in college, before getting derailed by my thesis).
I've been on a couple weeks' break from The List, reading the beautifully worthless, a novel in verse by Ali Liebegott, which was a gift from M's girlfriend (who is a stellar poet in her own right and has been hooking me up with the poetic equivalent of training wheels, since I mentioned that I'd like to learn to read the stuff more fluently).
Finished the beautifully worthless this morning, so now it's off to the library with me (another goal of the "read more" project is "use libraries more"). I'm leaning toward either Notes from the Underground or Daisy Miller...
*I'm not going to post or share the whole list for the time being, although I'll post titles as I read them. I know from experience that I do better with goals that I keep private / informal.
If My Brain Were Part of a Car, It Would Probably Be the Alternator)
Recently, I decided that I wanted to start reading again. I hadn't stopped, exactly, but I wasn't going through books as voraciously or continually as I used to, and I missed it.
For me, a lot of reading is about momentum (writing, too--in fact, I tend to approach them in a fairly similar range of ways). One of my good friends and on-and-off correspondents also happens to be one of my favorite writers, and our taste in and standards for books have thus far tended to overlap quite a lot, so I asked him to recommend a handful of really absorbing books I could use to jump-start my reading.
He sent a list of some seventy novels, NF books, and comics,* which I've been gradually working my way through ever since. I'm taking it slowly, but steadily.
Here's what I've finished from the list so far (not counting the half dozen that I already happened to have read):
The Stranger, by Albert Camus (I read about a quarter of this while stuck in an elevator, which was amusingly apropos to the section I was on at the time.)
Cruddy, by Lynda Barry
White Noise, by Don DeLillo (I'd gotten about a third of the way through this in college, before getting derailed by my thesis).
I've been on a couple weeks' break from The List, reading the beautifully worthless, a novel in verse by Ali Liebegott, which was a gift from M's girlfriend (who is a stellar poet in her own right and has been hooking me up with the poetic equivalent of training wheels, since I mentioned that I'd like to learn to read the stuff more fluently).
Finished the beautifully worthless this morning, so now it's off to the library with me (another goal of the "read more" project is "use libraries more"). I'm leaning toward either Notes from the Underground or Daisy Miller...
*I'm not going to post or share the whole list for the time being, although I'll post titles as I read them. I know from experience that I do better with goals that I keep private / informal.