I’m cheating in my photo blog this month by posting pictures of the books I’ve been reading. Most of them I’ve enjoyed, though one I haven’t started yet. I picked eight books and one magazine (Orion), because the magazine is as hefty as a novella. Let me know which books you’ve enjoyed recently!
I came across Gillo’s book in a Bookmarks Bulletin through LitHub. Haven’t started it yet, but it promises to be a good read.
This book was the inaugural winner of the Sowell Emerging Writers Prize, and sits at the intersection of nature, culture, and place. I’ve read it twice already, and keep gaining new insights from it.
Pritchard’s book is an ode to perseverance, to doing what you want to do even when injury has made that extremely difficult. Pritchard became hemiplegic after a climbing accident in which a chunk of rock fell on his head. This book follows his life after rehab, and the lengths he goes to to recover his outdoor self.
I listened to a podcast with Steve Almond not long after reading this book, and he was as self-effacing in person as he is on the page. Don’t expect hard and fast rules about how to write; this book presents musings on writing, what he’s found does and doesn’t work, and provides small prompts for generating new work. Plus the title is right on, especially for those of us who write memoir.
This has been a tough book to get into, mostly because Ware quotes from many philosophers whom he assumes you know about, but who I only have heard of in passing. The prose is dense with references to philosophical ideas that I’ve never heard of, and I struggle through each page. Regardless, I think this is an important book. The foreword is remarkably accessible, and after reading what Ware is trying to do with this book it’s maybe a little easier to read.
I read Millett’s THE CHILDREN’S BIBLE and found it captivating and wholly original – I don’t think I’ve read anything quite like it before. So when I saw this nonfiction collection, I had to read it. At first I couldn’t figure out the structure but about halfway through I realized how she’d put it together and it all made so much more sense. I’ll have to read it again to get into the earlier essays that I hadn’t understood as well.
I loved Rachel’s GOODBYE VITAMIN, which I’d picked up on a whim but was so quirky and well-written that it’s stuck in my head ever since. When I heard she had a new book, I knew I had to read it. I’m about 3/4 of the way through and it hasn’t disappointed. I imagine it was a challenge to write as each section is from a different point of view and a different timeframe.
I’ve cheated and put the latest edition of Orion Magazine in my reading pile, because each issue is like a jam-packed novella. I haven’t started reading it yet, but I’ll get to it soon.
A writing friend told me about this book so I got it from a secondhand bookstore. It’s fabulous. The two of us are working through it like a mini-MFA, complete with exercises on voice, using nouns and verbs, observing with all the senses, describing characters through their gestures, and more. We’re on Chapter 4 this week, which is about object and setting. Looking forward to working through more exercises.
