I am using this post to herein transcribe and share my summer reading list because:
a. I typically like keeping my nose stuck in books of all genres, lengths, and shapes, and so why not post them, and don’t books deserve a post, too?
b. After two weeks of brain-break, two weeks of being graduated and reading nothing too substantial, I am beginning to go stir crazy; already I miss the perpetual page-turning.
c. I’ve realized during these past few years as an undergrad. that if I am not given(or if I myself don’t write) a reading schedule, the books do not read themselves, and I don’t typically read them either. So in a sense, this list can be seen as my pseudo-attempt to organize my summer by book, although I can’t say that I’ve even decided in which order I’ll read the books, let alone taken the time to write them in order for this post. I think I’ll probably just throw them in a bag and once a week with my eyes closed pick one from the bag and act surprised at what I choose.
d. Did I mention that I’m bored? And with my soon-to-be-mailed-to-me degree, now an official member of the internationally accredited English Nerdery (Not to be confused with the English Nunnery?)
e. I need additional time to further procrastinate on posting something real.
f. All of the above.
To potentially save anyone from doing the math, I’ve listed /fifteen/ books I intend to read this summer, three more books than there are weeks left in this designated summer session. Unless we are counting the first two weeks of September as part of “summer,” in which case, my list boils down to about a book a week; Either way, in theory it shouldn’t prove to be too hefty a reading load for someone who spent three years becoming accustomed to expectations requiring the mental consuming and analyzing of seventy+ pages a night.
And besides, I assembled my summer reading list. I did. Me. Making these all books I actually want to read. Which is more than I can say for some of the texts assigned during my collegiate experience. And probably I’ll add more, or subtract a few, depending on their ability to keep my attention, and depending on my ability to read them without distracting myself.
In addition to the novels, there be seventeen short stories herein listed, mate. Some no more than five pages in length. I am reading those, too, but I really listed them because they arrgghh! good, and anyone who is looking for a bit of light (as in short) and interesting reading this summer should try a few of them. They come highly recommended by the aforementioned English Nerdery. (Yeah, I don’t really get why the pirate voice either. But it’s fun. You should try it. Try the pirate voice. I know you want to.)
Le Novels/Textbooks/Manuals/Other:
Babbitt -Sinclair Lewis
Practical Eco-Criticism -Glen A. Love
The Picture of Dorian Gray -Oscar Wilde
The Problem of Pain -C.S. Lewis
Modding MAC OSX -Dr. Erica Sadun
Birthday Letters -Ted Hughes
The Confidence-Man -Herman Melville
Small Pieces Loosely Joined -David Weinberger
Across the River and Into the Trees -E. Hemingway
Signing Everday Phrases -Mickey Flodin
The Things They Carried -Tim O’Brien
A Short History of Nearly Everything -Bill Bryson
In the Heart of the Sea -Nathanial Philbrick
This Side of Paradise -F. Scott Fitzgerald
A View of 20th Century British & American Theatre -Richard Eyre & Nicholas Wright
Le Short Stories:
“The Turn of The Screw” -Henry James
“Hills Like White Elephants” -E. Hemingway
“A Circle in the Fire”
“Everything that Rises Must Converge” -Flannery O’Conner
“A View of the Woods”
“The Lady with the Dog”
“Gusev” -Anton Chekhov
“The Secret Sharer” -Joseph Conrad
“Where are you going, Where have you been?” -Joyce Carol Oates
“The Magic Barrel”
“Idiots First” -Bernard Malamud
“My First Goose” -Isaac Babel
“The Chrysanthemums” -John Steinbeck
“The Madman” -Chinua Achebe
“What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” -Raymond Carver
“Roshoman” -Ryunosuke Akutagawa
“The Bucket Rider” -Franz Kafka
Poets Whose Lines I Also Intend To Randomly Peruse When I Choose:
Percy Shelley
Felicia Hemans
Keats
Anna Barbauld
Coleridge
Plath
WB Yeats
Anyone else reading anything in particular this summer? Fill a sister in. And, while you’re bookstorming, you should try the pirate voice. Come on, I know you want to.
It was here, while waiting for my brother, that I started this story, although, of course, at the time I did not know that stories of life are often more like rivers than books. But I knew a story had begun, perhaps long ago near the sound of water. And I sensed that ahead I would meet something that would never erode so there would be a sharp turn, deep circles, a deposit, and quietness.
-from A River Runs Through It → Read more...
I posted a picture of him for a silly Instagram-related game and found him waiting for me in my dreams, something which occurs so rarely it still explodes solidly-constructed dams inside me each time I see his face, mustached and smiling at mine just the way he always did, just the way I always remember him. As usual he didn’t say much, not anything I could hear or remember, but he was there and I knew it, and when I → Read more...
I have words washed out to sea. Words ushered quietly from my lips to my fingertips, waiting patiently for the right tide, for the moon to bring my stories alive.
I have words being reviewed, words accepted and words rejected, and I’m clinging to my favorite lines, fighting for them, and it feels strange and new and exhilaratingly infuriating, this tug-of-war of wills and how the slightest bit of caving can make me feel like I’m flirting with abandoning the sanctity → Read more...
[Alternately titled: Story, The Second: The Girl Who Moved To Washington State]
It began simply. A direct message on Twitter first, followed by texts; those texts, in turn, begat plans. With those plans came anxiety and apprehension – I didn’t know you, not your face or your voice or anything else, and I wasn’t sure I was ready to – but also something exciting, a strange and unexpected hope hovering quietly on the horizon. And then we met, conversed and laughed → Read more...