You see, I’ve been a lover of the ocean, and of all things aquatic and nautical-inspired, ever since I can remember.

My love for sea-faring-everything might very well have been fostered during the myriad spring breaks spent exploring quaint coastal communities in and around Port Ludlow, Washington. Some of my fondest childhood memories spring forth from days spent poking my curious face into every trinket shop in downtown Poulsbo and downtown Bremerton, carefully selecting bracelets laden with sparkling gems found in nearby sand, wondering about the sharks who gave up their teeth for necklaces while peering at tiny sailing ships in tiny bottles  and cheerfully collecting polished shells to keep in my pockets.

I still vividly remember late afternoons spent beach-combing for mollusks and buried treasure on Bainbridge and Whidbey Islands; a morning studying tides with my aunt Joy until she happily selected the perfect window for clamming in Port Angeles; the way saltwater smelled on my skin hours later, still stuck between my toes.

Until I reached my second year of college and realized a simultaneous double major in Biology and English Literature was going to be next to impossible without first learning how to clone myself, I very much wanted to be a Marine Biologist. As such, I had spent many a day-dream envisioning a life led on the ocean floor: mining murky water for mystic and illicit meaning; diving for clues to uncloak the mysteries of marine mammals; marveling daily at the miraculous design of oceanic ecosystems.

Though I know it to be much more than a fairytale career, I still find the possibilities, and the idea of a seascape workplace, endlessly fascinating, crashing waves to me as tempting as a siren song.

It’s little surprise then, that when I was properly introduced in college to one Mr. Herman Melville–author and sailor and self-taught know-it-all concerning all things leviathan and nautical–I fell into deep literary smit. I was fortunate enough to study under a bona fide Melvillean scholar at my university, and was able to take an entire course focusing solely on Melville and his collected works. Soon after, I read Moby-Dick multiple times, followed by every piece of his writing I could get my hands on, including his short stories (which are some of my favorites), and his collected poems.

I was surprised and thrilled to receive an email from a fellow Melville fan while I was in Korea (Hi! Scott), with references to Moby-Dick related awesomeness, my very favorite of which was a project entitled One Drawing for Every Page of Moby-Dick, and the fact that the artist (is super creative and talented, yes! and) knew to hyphenate the title, Moby-Dick (though you never hyphenate the whale, Moby Dick) made me want to give him a literary fist bump. Is there such a thing as a literary fist bump? There should be.

I’m verily smitten with the entire project (which is at this point, still ongoing), especially page 153.  For those of you lazy selective link clickers, this! is page 153 (image © Matt Kish):

The line from the text he took for this page’s inspiration, which also doubles as the piece’s title: “Did you fixedly gaze, too, upon that ribbed and dented brow; there also, you would see still stranger foot-prints — the foot-prints of his one unsleeping, ever-pacing thought.”

—————

In other quasi-nautical news, last Thursday I attended a (n uber-talented) friend’s art opening, her photography part of a three-point collaboration with two local Portland artists (Hey Jolby!) to ultimately create fifty works of original art, all sea-faring and pirate-esque in nature.

If faced with choosing one official favorite or walking the plank, I think I would have to go with “Treasure of Calypso”:

I was also quite taken with “The Death Coast”:

And “The End”:

(All images © Ashely Forrette & Jolby)

The exhibit is called Sea Legs (and is showing at the Together Gallery until March 20th), and I loved the show enough to seriously plot how I could somehow move into the exhibit space, so I didn’t have to walk out of it without every single piece tucked underneath my arm.

——————

Thus, we come to the end of this, our maritime digression of sorts.

Happy! March, ye land lubbers.

Post title is referencing a lyric (”I’m on a boat and/It’s going fast and/I’ve got a nautical-themed pashmina afghan”) from The Lonely Island’s “I’m On A Boat,” which, yes, I’ve probably watched six-hundred times, and yes, still makes me laugh, every time.

Oh! And I have a post up at Work It Mom! today, talking about how to deal with difficult bosses and colleagues, and my Print Of The Week is up on Style Lush, too!

On Things I Want, A List:

• Daylight Savings Time to end already, so that I can start seeing actual daylight before 7:30am.
  
• To find and again know that place where I’m able to laugh the way I used to laugh: a hearty, happy laugh devoid of cynicism, not stinking of fresh loss.
• This tree bookshelf.
• To be able to slice through delusion with my Magic Sword of Truth.
• To realize it’s not my job to slice through anyone’s delusion with my Magic Sword of Truth (and anyway, I don’t actually have one).
• Pumpkin-flavored everything.

On Recent Literary Happenings.

Nathan Bransford is a literary agent with a pretty large audience in the blogosphere thanks to his site, his Twittering, and the contests he runs on his site for writers of all genres. Before last week I’d never entered one of his contests, but had instead watched friends enter (and win!) his contests, wondering if I would ever grow a literary pair big enough to put my prose where my mouth is, and just TRY.

The realization that I really had (and have) nothing to lose coupled with some seriously supportive friends led to me submitting a first paragraph before the contest deadline.

I was not one of the ten chosen finalists, but I have to say (and have said via Twitter and Facebook already, so forgive me if this is redundant for you; I’m just a little psyched) that a “free night’s stay at Schrute Farms and honorable mention” out of 2,651 entries feels pretty unexpected/amazing/rad/enter happy adjective here.

The contest also led to me making a new writing buddy (Hi! Stephanie).

More than anything, it was just the boost of writing confidence I needed to keep me cheerfully plugging along on a few projects I’ve been working on in the past few months.

On attempting to write 50,000-75,000 words in 30 days.

I was on the fence. “The Crazy Fence” I decided to call it, and there I found myself, one leg dangling on the sane side, and the other flopped enthusiastically on the crazy side, the core of me feeling equally committed to both potential scenarios.

Scenario, The First: I decide to sit on the proverbial literary sidelines again this year and watch friends and fellow writers seek to (destroy their sleeping patterns and) create a book laden with actual WORDS on actual PAGES. I happen to be a pretty good cheerleader, lack of flexibility aside. Scenario, The First looks pretty comfy. Especially if someone hands me a mug of hot cocoa and maybe a giant foam hand, post haste.

Scenario, The Second: I decide to forgo resting on my (very comfortable) laurels to meet somewhat heinous (albeit thrilling!) daily word counts, in order to best a daunting deadline and arrive at an ultimate literary destination whereupon I will be lifted onto cheering shoulders, amidst sparklers and confetti and with banners of personal accomplishment flying. Despite the promise of actual work, Scenario, The Second sounds pretty great, too.

So you probably already guessed I chose the crazy side of the fence, otherwise known as Scenario, The Second.

I’m more in it for the guts than the glory, because to be 100% honest, I need the discipline.  I need a structured day, and starting my day with a run followed by a chunk of quiet writing time sounds beyond ideal; it sounds necessary.

I also need to write. So I’m going to do it. A lot of it, for thirty days straight. Wish me luck?

Thinking about joining the fray? You should (DO IT, and then) read this.

Want to be November writing buddies? You can find me under username “Kerri Anne” at www.nanowrimo.org.

Having also semi-recently read Gaiman’s Neverwhere (Are you tired of me talking about Neil Gaiman yet? TOO BAD, HA!) the idea of cities that aren’t really cities swirling above cities that are really cities, and the study of the general antithesis of things, has become a prominent theme in my imagination.

You see, in Neverwhere there is “London Above,” that is, London as we all know (or wish we knew) it. There is also an (in my opinion) even more amazing and eclectic array of non-city called “London Below,” reachable only by fully abandoning London Above.

The idea that I myself have my very own London Above and London Below (and that you probably do, too) is one that is endlessly fascinating to me.

What would the landscape of Kerri Below look like?

Maybe I would be a world-wide traveler, escaping to far away places on a routine basis to fulfill the wanderlust in me.

Maybe I would be a local hermit in a quiet village, happily writing away my days as I sit with my eyes to an open window facing the ocean, salt-water mixing with my five senses as I tell story after sea-faring story.

Maybe I would play roller derby, skating myself around a track with teammates cheering me ever-forward.

Maybe I would sell everything I own and move to another country to serve a cause, a people, a need.

Maybe I would teach kindergarten or fifth grade in a sleepy community where neighbors still bake pies for block parties, or maybe I would be a professor of Literature in a bustling college town.

Maybe I would live on a ranch in the middle of nowhere and ride horses to my heart’s content.

Maybe I would swim competitively, pushing my body’s boundaries to the limits while I glide through water I’ve always felt at home in.

Maybe I would learn to draw, to paint, to illustrate, and create colorful visuals to rest alongside my words.

Maybe I would immerse myself in French culture in an attempt to prove to myself that I do, in fact, remember how to speak the language.

Maybe I would learn to cut and sew, adorn and dye fabric, and make my own clothes.

Maybe I would be the Marine Biologist the 12-year-old-me always wanted to be.

Or, maybe, just maybe, I would do/be/see all of this, and more.

I’m beginning to see there’s nothing stopping me, but me.

Thus, without further adieu, I bring you: Books I’ve Read This Summer*, That I Think You Should Read, Too. You Know, If You Want To. (Ready? Set? Get psyched!)

Not really reading anything that qualifies as “fantasy” (and I sort of hate that genre description anyway) beyond Harry Potter before this summer, I have quickly become addicted to Neil Gaiman’s style of story-telling. Mr. Gaiman is perhaps best known as The Guy Who Wrote Coraline (which is awesome; the book, not the movie), but my favorite book of his thus far is Neverwhere.

Continuing happily on the Gaiman train, I also read Stardust, which I liked (there is a movie, too), and am currently reading The Graveyard Book and have Anansi Boys in my ever-growing “to-read” stack.

Thanks to Velma I’m also newly hooked on the Percy Jackson & The Olympians series, wherein the central premise is that all the Greek and Roman gods/goddesses we learned about in high school are still alive and well, and there are “heroes” (sons and daughters of the gods with another human parent) that are routinely required to save the world from total destruction at the hands of other heroes and the gods themselves. What’s super fun (to me!) about these books is how fast they are, read-wise, how creative the story-telling is, and how I feel like I’m being simultaneously entertained and treated to a Mythology refresher course.

(For the record, I always liked Mythology, and took college courses on the subject for my major, in addition to traditional high school mythology lessons. If you absolutely hated it, you (somewhat obviously) might not be a fan of these books.)

Another book I just read and loved (which I didn’t expect) was Maggie Stiefvater’s Shiver. I picked this book up from the library after reading the synopsis on Goodreads and then picked it up again two days ago for what I intended to be just a few minutes; I just wanted to read the first few pages to see if I wanted to keep it. What I ended up doing was reading the entire book from start to finish in nearly one sitting on Sunday afternoon. Shiver hooked me from page one, which oh so rarely happens, and I admittedly loved every second of this book. It was well-written and honest, and the conflict, while clearly present, wasn’t trite or over-done. In short, the drama made sense and made the book that much better. I also loved the play on point of view, which I won’t go into too much, lest I give anything away.

For any of you who get down with vampire fiction (the well-written kind, as opposed to the porny/romance novel kind), upon another friend’s suggestion I read Robin McKinley’s Sunshine and the story is one, I think, that will stick with me for years to come. The characters in this book were quite vivid, the world in which they live memorable and self-sufficient, and the story is unlike any other vampire-centric book I’ve ever read. I will herein admit to wishing McKinley had written a sequel or seven to Sunshine, instead of writing some of her other books, a few of which I read and didn’t really like.

Last but not least, I read Danny’s heart-wrenching meets hilarious memoir you’ve no doubt heard so much about by now, Rage Against the Meshugenah. I wasn’t timely enough to get an actual post up after he came to Portland to read at Powell’s, but rest assured (you can see the pictures, here, yes, and) Danny is a genuinely amazing person, kind and funny and quite tall, and his book is well worth the purchase. Struggling with depression is something we need to shout from the rooftops, so people will stop thinking they are standing on a precipice, alone.

Thus ends Book Rant: September Edition. (Here’s where I turn the proverbial tables.)

What are your all-time favorite books? Your “must-reads”, if you will? Read anything absolutely amazing (or terrible) lately?

*And yes, I’m totally counting “September” as “summer”. It’s not “fall” until the temperature stops rising daily past 80 degrees.

Whenever that happens my mind stops whatever else it was doing–my multi-tasking mode ceases to function–and my heart begins to race and my skin begins to blush, and I feel like someone is watching me, a stranger who was always there but whom I never noticed before this very moment.

Below are two poems that have moved me so profoundly during the past weeks that I can’t stop reading them, writing them, wondering if it’s indeed possible for poetry to exist so far outside of itself so as to be the exact words someone needs to read at the exact and finite moment they need to read them. (It must be.)

EARTH

It isn’t winter that brings it
out, my cowardice,
but the thickening summer I wallow in
right now, stinking of lilacs, green
with worms & stamens duplicating themselves
each one the same

I squat among rows of seeds & imposters
and snout my hand into the juicy dirt:
charred chicken bones, rusted nails,
dogbones, stones, stove ashes.
Down there is another hand, yours, hopeless,
down there is a future

in which you’re a white white picture
with a name I forgot to write
underneath, and no date,

in which you’re a suit
hanging with its stubs of sleeves
in a cupboard in a house
in a city I’ve never entered,

a missed beat in space
which nevertheless unrolls itself
as usual. As usual:
that’s why I don’t want to go on with this.

(I’ll want to make a hole in the earth
the size of an implosion, a leaf, a dwarf
star, a cave
in time that opens back & back into
absolute darkness and at last
into a small pale moon of light
the size of a hand,
I’ll want to call you out of the grave
in the form of anything at all)

-Margaret Atwood

KINDNESS

Before you know what kindness really is
you must lose things,
feel the future dissolve in a moment
like salt in a weakened broth.
What you held in your hand,
what you counted and carefully saved,
all this must go so you know
how desolate the landscape can be
between the regions of kindness.
How you ride and ride
thinking the bus will never stop,
the passengers eating maize and chicken
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness,
you must travel where the Indian ina white poncho
lies dead by the side of the road.
You must see how this could be you,
how he too was someone
who journeyed through the night with plans
and the simple breath that kept him alive.

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside,
You must know sorrow as the other deepest thing.
You must wake up with sorrow.
You must speak to it till your voice
catches the thread of all sorrows
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes any sense anymore,
only kindness that ties your hoes
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread,
only kindness that raises its head
from the crowd of the world to say
It is I you have been looking for,
and then goes with you everywhere
like a shadow or a friend.

-Naomi Shihab Nye

(And lest you think I boast endless amounts of free time, let me remind you I was an English Lit. major in college. OK, then. Here we go!)

Finished:

A-G
Things Fall Apart; The Madman, Chinua Achebe
Democracy, Henry Adams
Rashomon, Ryunosuke Akutagawa
Sense & Sensibility, Jane Austen
The Land Of Little Rain, Mary Austin
Culture and Anarchy, Matthew Arnold
My First Goose, Isaac Babel
Lost in the Funhouse, John Barth
The Devil’s Dictionary; An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge, Ambrose Bierce
Cathedral; What We Talk About When We Talk About Love, Raymond Carver
My Antonia, Willa Cather
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?, Joyce Carol Oates
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Not On Our Watch, Don Cheadle & Jon Prendergast
The Lady with the Dog; Misery, Anton Chekhov
The Awakening; Desiree’s Baby, Kate Chopin
Loose Woman, Sandra Cisneros
Blessing The Boats, Lucille Clifton
The Alchemist, Paulo Coelho
Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad
Maggie: A Girl Of The Streets, Stephen Crane
Tales of Conjure and The Color Line, Charles Waddell Chesnutt
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
Hard Times, A Tale of Two Cities & Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky
Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser
You Shall Know Our Velocity, Dave Eggers
Middlemarch, George Eliot
The Waste Land, Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot
Self-Reliance Other Essays, Ralph Waldo Emerson
Saint Marie (1934): Marie Lazarre, Louise Erdrich
The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
The Woman And The Men, Nikki Giovanni
The Sound and The Fury; As I Lay Dying; Absalom, Absalom; That Evening Sun, William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Revolt of “Mother”, Mary E. Wilkins Freeman
Lord of the Flies, William Golding

H-P
Dead Until Dark; Living Dead In Dallas; Club Dead; Dead To The World; Dead As A Doornail; Definitely Dead; All Together Dead; From Dead To Worse, Charlaine Harris
The Scarlet Letter; The Minister’s Black Veil; Young Goodman Brown, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Catch-22, Joseph Heller
Farewell to Arms; The Old Man and The Sea; The Sun Also Rises; Hills Like White Elephants, Ernest Hemingway
Communion, Bell Hooks
The Rise Of Silas Lapham, William Dean Howells
Birthday Letters, Ted Hughes
Their Eyes Were Watching God; Sweat, Zora Neale Hurston
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
Incidents In The Life Of A Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs
The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James
A White Heron, Sarah Orne Jewett
The Metamorphosis; The Hunger Artist, Franz Kafka
Flowers for Algernon, Daniel Keyes
One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Ken Kesey
The Merry Recluse, Caroline Knapp
Into the Wild, Jon Krakauer
The Rocking-Horse Winner, D.H. Lawrence
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee
Main Street, Sinclair Lewis
The Call Of The Wild, Jack London
The Magic Barrel, Bernard Malamud
Old Mother Savage, Guy de Maupassant
Moby-Dick; Redburn; Typee,; Billy Budd; The Confidence-Man; Bartleby the Scrivener, Herman Melville
Twilight; New Moon; Eclipse; Breaking Dawn; Midnight Sun (partial draft), Stephenie Meyer
On Liberty and other Essays, John Stuart Mill
The Crucible, Arthur Miller
Lust, Susan Minot
Like Life, Lorrie Moore
Beloved, Toni Morrison
The Things They Carried, Tim O’Brien
A Good Man is Hard to Find; Good Country People, Flannery O’Connor
1984; Animal Farm, George Orwell
Truth & Beauty, Ann Patchett
The Yellow Wallpaper, Charlotte Perkins Gilman
The Fall of the House of Usher; The Tell-Tale Heart; The Raven; The Bells, The Cask of Amontillado; The Purloined Letter, Edgar Allan Poe
The Jilting of Granny Weatherall, Katherine Anne Porter
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

Q-Z
Harry Potter: Books 1-7, J.K. Rowling
The Catcher In The Rye, J.D. Salinger
Offloading for Mrs. Schwartz, George Saunders
A Midsummer Night’s Dream; The Tempest; Romeo&Juliet; King Lear; Hamlet; Love’s Labor Lost; Macbeth; Henry IV; All’s Well That Ends Well, Shakespeare
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck
Walden and Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
Lord Of The Rings: Books 1 & 2, J.R.R. Tolkien
Eats, Shoots & Leaves, Lynne Truss
Adventures of Huckleberry Finn; The Adventures of Tom Sawyer; Pudd’nhead Wilson, Mark Twain
Slaughterhouse Five, Kurt Vonnegut
The Color Purple; Everyday Use, Alice Walker
The House of Mirth, Edith Wharton
Night, Elie Wiesel
The Importance of Being Earnest, Oscar Wilde

Currently Reading:
On Writing, Stephen King (I may have stolen borrowed this off of Chris’ nightstand this morning because he read me three excerpts from it Saturday while we were driving to the beach, and while I’m not a huge fan of King’s typical genre, three excerpts and forty pages in and I’m already hooked on this book.)

Started:
Made In America; A Short History Of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson
Scribbling The Cat; Don’t Let’s Go to the Dogs Tonight, Alexandra Fuller (Why am I simultaneously attempting to read two different books by the same author? Twice. Great question. I have no logical answer.)
The Omnivore’s Dilemma, Michael Pollan

Discarded, For Now:
Caramelo, Sandra Cisneros (I absolutely adore Cisneros and Loose Woman is one of the best books of poetry ever written, but for some reason I couldn’t get into this novel.)
A Thread Across The Ocean, John Steele Gordon (It’s the history of the transatlantic cable, and I have every intention of finishing it. Someday.)
Jumpers, Tom Stoppard (This was a gift from a dear friend, and I will finish it before I die. I hope.)

Discarded, Forever:
Snapshots, William Norris (Did I ever tell you the story about how the author emailed me two years! after I wrote that post, after apparently googling himself and seeing I wasn’t a big fan? Awesome.)
Little Women, Louisa May Alcott (Ugh. I tried, I really did. But the movie is just way better, and Alcott’s writing style irks me.)
Death Comes For The Archbishop, Willa Cather (I realized about twenty pages into this book that it was hard enough for me to read My Ántonia when I was forced to for class, so reading Cather for recreation wasn’t so much going to happen.)

My reading has admittedly slowed since the end of my collegiate career, but it’s something I’m always perpetually coming back to, collecting more and more books, and perpetually carving out the time to actually read them.

Recently I finished You Shall Know Our Velocity by Dave Eggers and (finally!) started Everything Is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Instead of talking about those two books (both of which I highly recommend), today I wanted to share some of the first books I ever read, books that helped shape my love of all things written and illustrated, books that provided me ample ingredients to grow self-confidence while simultaneously spending quality time with my mother and grandmother: books I can’t wait to read to my (not yet existent) nieces and nephews, and to my own children if ever I have them.

1. Socks for Supper by Jack Kent:

This is one of the very first books I ever learned to read, and before that my Grandma Ladish read it to me incessantly, per my perpetual requests, because she loved to read to us, and also because she is endlessly patient. It’s about an older couple who can’t afford food and so they knit cozy red socks in exchange for cheese and bread. I remember how nice the couple is in the book, and how they are happy with next to nothing. I think that’s why my Grandmother loved the book so much, and I loved it because the hours spent reading and being read to with her comprise some of my favorite of all childhood memories.

2. Goodnight, Moon by Margaret Wise Brown:

A classic book that I remember Mom reading to babycarrot sister and I, though I also remember how spooky the particular room looked in the story, something about the blue and green lights, and the way I used to be afraid of shadows taking unfriendly shapes in my bedroom when Mom closed the door after saying goodnight.

3. The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Williams (and apparently also narrated by Meryl Streep):

I still remember this book boasting some of the most vivid, unique, and most memorable illustrations of all the books I ever read as a child. I also remember that this book was a favorite book of mine before I went through my “I don’t want any dolls or stuffed animals in my room because for some reason I was allowed to watch The Tommyknockers and now I’m convinced that all inanimate objects with faces come alive at night and also: I’m afraid of the dark” phase.

4. The Secret Garden, by Frances Hodgson Burnett:

One of my all-time favorite books of my childhood and one I probably read weekly for many months of my life. This book and The Lion, The Witch & The Wardrobe were the two stories that had me searching for secret passageways underneath our stairs, for hidden doors to hidden worlds in my wardrobe (I really had one!), and for the extraordinary in the most ordinary of places.

5. Alexander and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day, by Judith Viorst:

Proof that I’m not the only one who has ever woken up with gum in my hair (though I might have been in college when that happened). Also: that whining about how grumpy you are can sometimes be profitable. But only if you’re an imaginary child with fire-red hair, and there is a moral to the story, of course.

6. The Pokey Little Puppy, by Janette Sebring Lowrey:

I don’t remember the entire story, but it centers around a curious little puppy who is also (ridiculously cute and) for some reason roaming the countryside poking his nose in everything, so curious! is he, and I think at one point he tears his favorite blanket in a fence, and gets himself stuck in a straberry patch? I really can’t remember, but I know there was a fence at some point in the illustrations. I think this is the part where I’m supposed to say it sparked curiosity in me and taught me valuable lessons about the delicate balance of straying too far from home vs. exploring the world at large. Really I’m not so sure it did either of those things; it did, however, succeed in making me want a dog really badly.

——–

So tell me, what were your favorite books to read as a child?

But, seriously. I was excited. Because strawberries and home-made pound-cake? SO good. And books to read, with the added perk of not having to choose all of them, combined with the accountability factor? Exactly what I had been needing. An excuse to get out of the house once a month, AND the determination acquired guilt to actually FINISH a book, thankyouverymuch? Yes, please.

We even ended our first meeting with a little thematic sing-songing. Our chosen theme song went a little something like, “We Represent the! Paperback Ladies Guild.” Or I could have just made that right up. But I still imagine our imaginary theme song being sung to the tune of “We Represent the Lollipop Guild” from The Wizard of Oz, only with less creep-factor. Because I think we all can admit that wily wizard and his playground Oz had a lot of creep factor. Not to even mention the flying monkeys. And the sleepy poppy juice.

Moving right along then.

As excited as I was about my newfound monthly accountability and pound-cake I only went to one meeting, because, well, the whole destination wedding extravaganza, followed closely by the buying a puppy and moving to another state adventures.

For awhile there was scarcely time to sleep and bathe regularly, let alone sit quietly and read interesting and dynamic prose. All of that is about to change, however, because I am hereby carving out some reading time for myself, and anyway, I’m almost done unpacking.

The new job doesn’t start until Monday 11.12, and until then I do of course have myriad loose ends to tie and knot firmly, not the least of which is finishing mailing wedding announcements to family and friends, and also letting everyone know that, ahem, we MOVED have time to read. Or so I am telling myself. Denial is half the battle, right?

So, with only a bit more adieu, I bring you: books I must! finish this fall, upon pain of being stoned with hardbound romance novels, and “this fall” hereby ending on December 25th because I’m holding out for no snow up until then, and also, I ‘m a cheater started this list-making a bit late this year:

1. Reading Lolita in Tehran, by Azar Nafisi
2. How We Are Hungry, by Dave Eggers
3. The Inheritance of Loss, by Kiran Desai
4. Deep Survival, by Laurence Gonzales

Added to Le List: Our first two book-club Paperback Ladies Guild books, that I never finished, because as previously noted, I am awesome:

5. Death Comes to the Archbishop, by Willa Cather
6. The Scarlet Pimpernel, by Baroness Von Something

I was originally selected to choose November’s book for my long-lost book club, and although I had months to decide and then simultaneously change my mind, I instantly knotted up inside, because oh! the responsibility, and oh! the choices. My mind always reels with the sheer number of choices when faced with such decisions. Faulkner or Shelley? Melville or Carmen Electra? It’s just such a close call.

(What are YOU reading right now, or maybe someday?)

“A word after a word after a word is power.”

——————