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.
Stories I said I had. Tangential stories and life-changing ones.
Until today I haven’t known where, exactly, to begin. And so quiet this space has mostly been because some beginnings are tricky. Sometimes it’s quite impossible to denote where something ended and something else entirely began.
I’m not going to be able to tell you everything, but then the best stories never really do, do they?
(That’s not a trick question. I promise they don’t.)
(Unless the story was penned by Henry James, in → Read more...
This week I’ve been finding pieces of writing long lost and forgotten. Unearthing words belonging to me, and words penned by some of my favorite of all literary voices, collected and saved and scrawled excitedly on pages littered with foggy memories of past lives, obscured now in light of all that was and is and is to come.
Of the words not belonging to me, Lucille Clifton’s were the ones I found most often, recounted in notebook after notebook, or inked → Read more...
They say water changes stone, carving it over time to angles and dimensions in harmony with water’s need to reach the sea; but sometimes, stones change the watercourse instead.
-The lovely and eclectic Shari
I’m collecting my favorite corners, like the one with the stunning oak tree on display for an entire neighborhood to see, its limbs shading a bustling crosswalk shooting confidence into pedestrians like electric currents of white light, fresh graffiti on a nearby curb: an infinity symbol, black and simple.
I’m collecting stories about the apartment window filled with small elephant figurines along one of my favorite walking routes. So many trunks standing side-by-side and none of them alive.
I’m collecting the surprisingly → Read more...