Anna Clark at her blog Isak recommends a reading list for writers of narrative nonfiction at this link.
Kevin Brockmeier relays amusing things people actually said to him at the Iowa Writers Workshop for the Los Angeles Review of Books here.
That's all I've got for you today. (What did you expect? It's the end of the month, a long hot month it was too.....)
Sunday, July 31, 2011
Saturday, July 30, 2011
Book Shame
Just the other day I was emailing with my virtual friend Chris about books we haven't read and are embarrassed not to have. His was Malcolm Lowry's Under the Volcano; mine was (is!) Herman Melville's Moby Dick. We both have copies of our unread books and we both have good intentions, but......
Today on the blog at Hunger Mountain many editors reveal their Book Shame, classics they feel they should have read by now but haven't. I'm happy to report that at least one other person hasn't read Moby Dick!
Since my last post was about reading, and the previous one was about shame, book shame seems right up my alley.
What about you? What haven't you read that nags at you?
Today on the blog at Hunger Mountain many editors reveal their Book Shame, classics they feel they should have read by now but haven't. I'm happy to report that at least one other person hasn't read Moby Dick!
Since my last post was about reading, and the previous one was about shame, book shame seems right up my alley.
What about you? What haven't you read that nags at you?
Friday, July 29, 2011
Reading to Excess
The other day I heard an interview with author Nina Sankovitch on the Leonard Lopate Radio Show. The discussion was about her new book, Tolstoy and the Purple Chair: My Year of Magical Reading, a memoir of the author's year of reading a novel a day as a way of working through her grief over her sister's death (her sister was in her mid-forties).
During the interview Nina Sankovitch makes the remark that most people cannot fathom reading 365 novels in a single year. I, actually, can. During my heaviest reading period (when I commuted to work by train for nearly 2 hours each way), I read about 500 novels a year. Yes, that's right, 500, not 50. I read at least one a day, usually started the 2nd, and occasionally made it part of the way into a 3rd book of the day.
Even when not reading at such a pace, I have almost always read between 200 and 300 books a year, which is about 4 to 6 a week. Recently, however, I have lost my drive to read. I am down to 2 or 3 books a week, sometimes just 2. This is a scant number for me, a quick reader who would rather curl up with a book than just about anything. Until now. (And if you are wondering how I manage this much, I never watch television, ever, unless a family member asks me to join them. Or unless American Idol is on. It's stunning how much time you have if you don't watch tv.)
I taught myself to read when I was 4 years old. I remember the day. I had asked and asked my mother to teach me all morning, but she was busy. She finally got exasperated and told me to go across the street and ask our neighbor Mrs. Hannenberg, since she had been an elementary school teacher. We kids all called Mrs. Hannenberg "Mrs. Hamburger" (I once heard my mother in her most charming voice tell Mrs. Hannenberg that the children at our house called her "Mrs. Hummingbird," which I think my mother would rather we had called her, and Mrs. Hannenberg, the veteran teacher, replied, "That's odd. Most children call me Mrs. Hamburger." There was no putting one over on Mrs. Hannenberg.)
(And I guess I should mention that my mother used to be an elementary school teacher too. But when I was 4, she had 4 kids under the age of 5. She was a busy woman.)
So I marched across the street and told Mrs. Hannenberg that this was the day I was going to learn to read, and could she help me. She gave me a blue cloth-cover book of the "Meet Dick and Jane" series and sent me home. I sat on the couch with the book and would not get up until I could read. I was in tears, highly frustrated, when my mother told me to go outside and swim with the other kids, but I refused. I was going to learn to read. I had the alphabet under control, so I had a good start. Finally, the sounds came together and made words, and by the end of that afternoon, I had read the whole book. Mrs. Hannenberg told me to keep it. Maybe my parents have it still.
Since that time, I have read like crazy. Except for when I was in grad school and had no time to read anything but texts and academic papers (I didn't go to grad school for anything literary), and when I had two kids under two years of age and I hardly read except for books on child-raising. And for now, when I am reading only 2 or so books a week (for the past 15 years, I have read a lot of nonfiction and a ton of poetry in addition to the novels I read.)
I don't know why I am not compelled to read these days. The heat? The general busy-ness of my life? The lack of books I really want to read here in Japan (which never stopped me before--having to read anything I could get my hands on here has broadened my scope immensely)?
I don't know why, and I don't know for how long this general reading malaise will last. Anybody ever gone into reading withdrawal? Maybe it's a good thing?
During the interview Nina Sankovitch makes the remark that most people cannot fathom reading 365 novels in a single year. I, actually, can. During my heaviest reading period (when I commuted to work by train for nearly 2 hours each way), I read about 500 novels a year. Yes, that's right, 500, not 50. I read at least one a day, usually started the 2nd, and occasionally made it part of the way into a 3rd book of the day.
Even when not reading at such a pace, I have almost always read between 200 and 300 books a year, which is about 4 to 6 a week. Recently, however, I have lost my drive to read. I am down to 2 or 3 books a week, sometimes just 2. This is a scant number for me, a quick reader who would rather curl up with a book than just about anything. Until now. (And if you are wondering how I manage this much, I never watch television, ever, unless a family member asks me to join them. Or unless American Idol is on. It's stunning how much time you have if you don't watch tv.)
I taught myself to read when I was 4 years old. I remember the day. I had asked and asked my mother to teach me all morning, but she was busy. She finally got exasperated and told me to go across the street and ask our neighbor Mrs. Hannenberg, since she had been an elementary school teacher. We kids all called Mrs. Hannenberg "Mrs. Hamburger" (I once heard my mother in her most charming voice tell Mrs. Hannenberg that the children at our house called her "Mrs. Hummingbird," which I think my mother would rather we had called her, and Mrs. Hannenberg, the veteran teacher, replied, "That's odd. Most children call me Mrs. Hamburger." There was no putting one over on Mrs. Hannenberg.)
(And I guess I should mention that my mother used to be an elementary school teacher too. But when I was 4, she had 4 kids under the age of 5. She was a busy woman.)
So I marched across the street and told Mrs. Hannenberg that this was the day I was going to learn to read, and could she help me. She gave me a blue cloth-cover book of the "Meet Dick and Jane" series and sent me home. I sat on the couch with the book and would not get up until I could read. I was in tears, highly frustrated, when my mother told me to go outside and swim with the other kids, but I refused. I was going to learn to read. I had the alphabet under control, so I had a good start. Finally, the sounds came together and made words, and by the end of that afternoon, I had read the whole book. Mrs. Hannenberg told me to keep it. Maybe my parents have it still.
Since that time, I have read like crazy. Except for when I was in grad school and had no time to read anything but texts and academic papers (I didn't go to grad school for anything literary), and when I had two kids under two years of age and I hardly read except for books on child-raising. And for now, when I am reading only 2 or so books a week (for the past 15 years, I have read a lot of nonfiction and a ton of poetry in addition to the novels I read.)
I don't know why I am not compelled to read these days. The heat? The general busy-ness of my life? The lack of books I really want to read here in Japan (which never stopped me before--having to read anything I could get my hands on here has broadened my scope immensely)?
I don't know why, and I don't know for how long this general reading malaise will last. Anybody ever gone into reading withdrawal? Maybe it's a good thing?
Thursday, July 28, 2011
Shame on Me
"What people are ashamed of usually makes a good story.” F Scott Fitzgerald
I saw this quote on Quotes4Writers, the Twitter feed (worth subscribing to, if you like these kinds of quotes).
So, what are you ashamed of? Okay, now write.
I saw this quote on Quotes4Writers, the Twitter feed (worth subscribing to, if you like these kinds of quotes).
So, what are you ashamed of? Okay, now write.
Tuesday, July 26, 2011
Poetry Garage
Have you ever parked in one of Disneyland's vast parking lots and had to remember where your car was by the name of an animated character whose visage was nearest your parking spot? How about remembering which floor of a garage you are parked on? Do you refer to numbers, or color codes?
One parking garage in Chicago has helped its patrons remember the floors where they left their cars through poetry. How do they do that, you might wonder, and is it effective?
Check out the whole story of the Poetry Garage in this Poetry Foundation audio feature.
One parking garage in Chicago has helped its patrons remember the floors where they left their cars through poetry. How do they do that, you might wonder, and is it effective?
Check out the whole story of the Poetry Garage in this Poetry Foundation audio feature.
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