Dig in and read.
Posted on | January 6, 2008 | 33 Comments
It is midwinter here in my small corner of the world and also in my blue-roomed heart. I’m tucked in, my pulse moving slowly and full of trepidation like water running under pale knocked together shards of ice. Self doubt circles like a pack of coyotes, their tracks mushy and dark where the earth collapses, pressing up close to icy ribbon of river.
This is what winter always brings: a bareness; an uncomfortable edge; inadequacy. Things seem so blatant; personal deficits larger than life, like the huge fiery orange sun we watched today. It tangled in the bare branches of the trees near us at the top of the sledding hill, then slipped away, leaving the snow stained pink with longing.
I spent the morning in a quiet house reading Francine Prose’s Reading Like A Writer, and coming face to face with the blunt edge of my own lack. In the back of the book, “119 Books To Be Read Immediately” and I’ve read only a small handful. I’m a slow reader, with a tendency to dally in the text. I soak up sentences. I read with a pen, marking, dog-earing, rummaging back through previous pages. But I’m also a sporadic, undisciplined reader, and I’m ashamed of this.
Books have a way of inhabiting the drawers of my mind, like so many jars of gesso and paint, easily jostled, staining the surface of my day. I have a hard time shaking free of them, and carrying on, so I have a certain reluctance grappling with anything weighty unless I have the means to hunker down and read it for an entire day.
Also, I am lazy. I drag my feet about finishing books that don’t catch my interest in the first few lines (fickle, I know). I lack analytical fervor. I read simply for the joy of language, story, and words, which I’ve always loved and carried covetously around in my pocket on the scribbled pages of a 4×6” Mead memo book. But I lack critical finesse, and also time, clarity, and a hundred other things have thus far prevented me from reading the list of books I probably should already have read.
Somewhere along the way I’ve also let myself start thinking that time spent curled on the couch with a book frivolous leisure time, less meaningful than time spent clicking away at the keyboard, constructing jagged sentences about blue shadows falling long across bright snow. Have no doubt: I’ll devour books by the authors I love (mostly contemporary writers: Kingsolver, Diddion, Munro, O’Brien) and I’ll jealously leaf through books by new authors who are rising like sudden shiny stars into the literary sky. But I’ve rarely gone back to the masterpieces, the ones that have endured: prose and plot and construction indelible and profound across time. And lately, as I’m grappling with my own writing more and more, I’ve started to feel a hunger for these texts: knowing that as I read them, I’ll be carried across time, into the world of ideas, word by word.
Word by word, closer to what I need to know.
So I’ve decided to make this my year of reading. This, simply, is my mondo beyondo and my one little word. Read.
{ Tell me: What two books most changed the way you see the world, writing, life, etc?}
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33 Responses to “Dig in and read.”
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My book is available for pre-order on Amazon here:
35 before 35 (A list of things I am attempting this year):
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I am a writer, mixed-media artist, idea starter, stalker of wonder, finder of four leaf clovers, and mama of boys. ...{more}
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January 7th, 2008 @ 12:30 am
It’s so very hard to pick just two, but if pressed, I would go with Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, and The Collected Stories of Amy Hempel (only because that saves me from picking just one of her short story collections). And yet, that doesn’t even scratch the surface.
January 7th, 2008 @ 12:45 am
I’d pick The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron and Should You Leave? by Peter D. Kramer.
January 7th, 2008 @ 12:48 am
Lately those that excite and make me believe that I too can write are: The Way the Crow Flies by Ann Marie MacDonald and Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Have you read Eat, Pray, Love? From what I’ve read on your blog, you and she seem to be somewhat kindred spirits.
I love it when a book inspires me to write – it is the best feeling.
January 7th, 2008 @ 1:17 am
recommendations that you might like Art and Fear – can’t remember the author and then also one of my all time favorites is Wallace Stegner’s Crossing to Safety
January 7th, 2008 @ 2:16 am
If I’m lucky, I’ll find a book every year or so with the power to shift my perspective. The first one that I remember vividly doing so was John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. Bohumil Hrabal’s I Served the King of England taught me that prose could be poetry too. The list goes on.
January 7th, 2008 @ 2:30 am
Annie Dillard, Annie Dillard, Annie Dillard.
I love this post.
January 7th, 2008 @ 2:50 am
I can’t even begin to tell you how your description of where you’re at right now has touched me. These past few weeks, it has taken literally every shard of self mastery and control I have not to completely crumble under the weight of my own self-scrutiny. I am, without a doubt, the world’s harshest critic — at least when it comes to my own shortcomings. And the fear… the undeniable terror that comes with the self-doubt… it has been crippling. But to know that I am not losing my mind — that even though I often feel so incredibly isolated here with my little self-possessed thoughts of inadequacy… there are others out there like you — others who I have come to respect and admire through their writing — that sometimes feel the same way I do. And knowing that I am not completely alone with these thoughts of mine… well, that’s just about the greatest gift anyone could have given me today. Thank you so much for that.
Two books for you:
“The Power of One” by Bryce Courtney (because the underlying message is just incredibly timeless and important)
“Under the Tuscan Sun” by Frances Mayes (because she has a way of creating imagery through her words that I find incredibly beautiful)
And also — anything by Elizabeth Berg… I find her ability to capture the essence of the human spirit so honestly and clearly to be completely captivating
Thank you again for sharing yourself so beautifully in this post. I wonder if you have any idea how deeply you touch the lives of your readers, because you are so brave? You do.
January 7th, 2008 @ 2:57 am
Most recently, Eat Pray Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. She’s so honest, insightful, joyful, and easy in her writing. It’s a book I continue to go back to when I need inspiration to tell my own stories. Another more contemporary book that touches me on so many levels is The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd. Again, there is a certain ease about this book that is so inspiring to me. I just imagine that this whole book was practically channeled through her.
Also, I say celebrate your own style of reading and writing. So what if you never read the classics? I’m a big believer in following your own natural rhythms and affinities. And I think you’re a lovely writer–I’ve been inspired each time I visit.
January 7th, 2008 @ 8:44 am
Recently? Because I’m hopeless at remembering books gone by. The Home Maker by Dorothy Canfield Fisher.
Perspective adjustment in the truest sense.
January 7th, 2008 @ 9:05 am
I’ve always loved reading and have put it on the backburner these past few years. I’m a fast reader, however, but I do get fickle and put things down if they slow me down or take me longer to read. As is I have a few books sitting half finished that I am slowly wanting to finish, but haven’t found the passion to do it yet.
I meant to comment on your last post with the sea turtles. I would love to think they are going into some starry abyss during their “lost years”. http://www.underwatertimes.com/news.php?article_id=10084219537
January 7th, 2008 @ 11:57 am
1. Drinking the rain by Alix Kates Shulman.
2. Drunking the rain by Alix Kates Shulman.
Read.
January 7th, 2008 @ 12:24 pm
Wow, Christina. I love this post. I feel you very much in this – I too am a very fickle reader. My husband loves to tease me about how many books are sitting on my night table with only a chapter or two started. I also need to be captured in the beginning or else it is over before it starts. I am also lazy – reading with a pen and sticky notes. And the words and sentences and characters usually don’t leave me either through the day. I fall in love with books and the characters in them. It depresses me sometimes to end a book because that daily interaction with the characters ends too. I guess that’s why I become so loyal to certain blogs (like this one) checking them daily to hear something new.
Two books – very difficult – especially with my pregnancy brain. But here goes:
“Prodigal Summer” by Kingsolver – the life I want in a book: living at a nature preserve tracking populations of the species that surround – pure love – but of course I want my husband and kids there, too.
“Jane Eyre” – by Charlotte Bronte – covered in sticky notes and underlined in different color inks – stereotypical, but I love the Feminist Manifesto, as it has been called.
And one more – “The Lives of a Cell” (can’t remember the author) – The reason I became a biology major – one word – MITOCHONDRIA – fascinating.
January 7th, 2008 @ 1:14 pm
two books out of an endless list… “hopscotch” by argentinian julio cortazar and “a hundred years of solitude” by colombian gabriel garcÃa marquez. two stories that really show how to interwine stories and keep you thinking for a long time. enjoy the new year!
January 7th, 2008 @ 2:06 pm
Absolutely The Power of One by Bryce Courtenay – beautifully written and life altering as well as my old faithful Catcher in the Rye. I am currently reading Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close by Jonathon Safran Foer and I can picture it being up there on my list by the time I am done!
January 7th, 2008 @ 5:15 pm
Oh, I know that jealousy. Of the people with time, the writers who have found it, and no matter how I have chosen to spend my life, I envy those with days free to write and read.
“My Name is Asher Lev” by Chaim Potok. Best character study in the world.
“Freddy and Fredericka” by Mark Helprin. How can a book be hilarious and smart and silly and deep and a study on the monarchy all at once?
January 7th, 2008 @ 5:36 pm
A bit off topic, but readers of the NYT Paper Cuts blog recently furnished a wonderfully literate list of favorite story collections, though it’s not as international as it could be . . .
http://papercuts.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/unlikely-stories/
January 7th, 2008 @ 11:22 pm
Oh, the love of books and story – I can’t think of anything necessarily to recommend right this second – I’ve just gotten to where I can READ again, without my brain checking out. I eat up my books like food, big gulps, and I wish I could be like you, slowly taking time to enjoy a sentence. Sometimes I do, but mostly I gallumph along, breathless for what happens next.
I did just read Abundance, by Sena Jeter Naslund, a novel about Marie Antoinette. I love this author, and her novel Ahab’s Wife is one of my favorites. But with Abundance, she had me hoping against hope that the royal family would escape, that history was wrong!
I just have to say, that if I didn’t adore you so, I would stew in hopeless jealousy for your amazing creative talent. Please give yourself credit for all the wonderful things you DO create and all that have yet to come!
January 7th, 2008 @ 11:46 pm
I really love the art you’re making lately, the textures are always so interesting, I think you would enjoy reading Italo Calvino, he wrote this book about cities with women’s names and he would describe them, it’s a wonderful book, I think it’s called “The Invisible Cities”
January 8th, 2008 @ 1:08 am
The first book that came to mind was ‘Fredrick Douglass, Life of an American Slave’. I learned from it that telling a story in a simple fashion can have a profound effect. I also learned the importance of tenacious, hard labor(as a free man, after his escape) combined with attention to study is an incredible combination in a human being. My second favorite is ‘Little Women’. I love the way it represents a progressive way of thinking for it’s time and gives descriptions of women as we are, not one dimensional, but with many qualities and flaws, very human.
January 8th, 2008 @ 9:31 am
First, I agree with Jill: The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron; second, anything by Anne Lamott, like Plan B: Further thoughts on Faith. She inspires writing in many of her books (also, Bird by Bird), and she also has a way of looking at major, minor, and everyday “calamities” that can be helpful in not taking everything too seriously and in seeing that everyone has difficulties.
Your writing is very uniquely yours, is detailed, descriptive, and definitely inspirational, and your artwork is beautiful. Please don’t knock yourself and get down about how or what you read. I’m a lifetime avid reader–and I have gone through many reading phases, have put down or not bought many books because of the first lines or pages, and have sometimes annotated and underlined so much that you can’t hardly see the original lines. I really don’t think that writing notes is lazy, and I don’t think that putting books down or reading several at once is fickle. Read and enjoy.
January 8th, 2008 @ 11:26 am
I can relate to your reading patterns. I just allow myself to follow those whims–if I feel the need to roll around in contemporary authors, I do. If I need to read poetry, I do. If I need to return to the canon, I do. Indulgence, though I read fast and have a wee memory for these books. Returning to my favorites is nice, though I begin to feel sheepish in book conversations.
My two books that made me want to write:
- Anne Frank’s diary
- The Bell Jar
My two books that help me want to write more:
- Bird by Bird
- Writing Down the Bones
January 8th, 2008 @ 12:34 pm
The book that most changed my life, in terms of its impact and repercussions and how it made me feel and think, is Night by Elie Weisel.
The book that most captured me imagination — created the love of reading — was the Little House in the Prairie series — not so much for any literary accomplishments — but because, at age 10, these books cemented me to the label “Avid Reader”. That changed my life.
January 8th, 2008 @ 5:54 pm
see i have the opposite problem – i can’t ever stop reading, which i assure you can be just as bad (if not worse) as not reading enough. hmmm, for a year of reading i would go back to the classics. maybe some Melville – i know after i finished Moby Dick i couldn’t put it down, i just carried it around with me for a few days so i could continue to feel the power – a real master at capturing the human condition. Also, Carson McCullers’ The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, or maybe even The Great Gatsby – i know it’s so freshman-year-of-college, but they don’t call it the great American novel for nothing.
January 8th, 2008 @ 7:19 pm
Two books that I both loved to read and made me want to be a better writer?
1. House of Mirth, Edith Wharton. Structured, measured, carefully controlled, and brilliant. Old school style.
2. Dani Shapiro’s Fugitive Blue. I actually love most of her stuff, but that was the first book of hers that I read, and it made me want to be a writer so bad. I had a similiar reaction to Jonathan Lethem’s Motherless Brooklyn.
January 8th, 2008 @ 7:47 pm
So many books already mentioned speak to me. In particular, I relate to the comment about books that make one an avid reader. Anne of Green Gables is the book that made me want to devour words and pages. I remember hiding under the pillow with a flashlight to read it after bedtime. I’m a Canadian, so the importance of place, combined with the imagination of a young girl, make me pick it up even as an adult.
January 9th, 2008 @ 9:15 am
The love of a good woman, alice munro (i re-read it now and then and there is always something new tucked in there that blows my mind)
January 10th, 2008 @ 1:24 am
I love the artwork that is emerging here this month! It has inspired my own creative juices and I have had so much fun.
In regards to books:
Lately, the Norwegian author Per Petterson has had a profound effect on the way I think about my own writing. ‘Out Stealing Horses’ and ‘In the Wake’ are two of his books that are available in English and that has meant the world to me in terms of the narrative voice. I also feel very close to the landscape and the people he writes about in his books.
January 10th, 2008 @ 3:59 pm
another vote for Annie Dillard, specifically “For the Time Being.” No other book has ever spoken to me so personally about life, God, nature, and being a blood-and-soul member of the human race.
January 10th, 2008 @ 5:27 pm
The Prophet by Kahil Gibran….his words on marriage and on children resonate within me even today and I first read him forty years ago. Also To Kill a Mockingbird….it thrills me that both of my daughters consider it one of their very favorite books also. There are many more books that have shaped my thoughts and beliefs…some much more recent than those but those two stay with me, long after they were first read….and reread.
January 11th, 2008 @ 5:50 pm
Thanks to your link, I’m currently reading Francine Prose’s, Reading Like A Writer. Sounds to me like she’s advocating reading as you’re already doing–for the love of it.
When I think of beautifully written sentences, you are one of the writers who leaps to mind. Give yourself a break, okay?
January 12th, 2008 @ 7:47 am
Christina, I hope you’ll forgive me if my comment goes in another direction. I, too, love reading…and I completely relate to much of what you wrote about your reading habits. I haven’t read the books ‘they’ all say I ‘should’ have…I give up quickly if a book doesn’t hook into my heart right away…I often take forever to read a book because I can convince myself that there are much more ‘important’ things to do than giving myself a big chunk of uninterrupted fiction time…and lazy, well, that’s my middle name. So I hear you loud and clear…and yet… What I heard in this post is a lot of ‘should.’ (I recently bought myself a magnet that says, “I just should myself.”) This was the sentence that really jumped out at me…because it sounded like the inner critic you later referred to: “I lack critical finesse…prevented me from reading the list of books I probably should already have read.” And I just wanted to point out that from where I stand it appears to me that the reason you’re not spending big chunks of time reading books you ‘should have’ read might be because you’re busy creating your own masterpiece: the book of your life…writing gorgeous prose, making vivid visual art, nurturing a beautiful family, teaching with passion, creating a life in the country, capturing wonderful image memories in your photos, spending time with family and friends. I hope for you that as you make ‘read’ your theme word for this year in your Mondo Beyondo that you will reach for each book that’s being given the gift of your time because it’s calling to you with joy…and not hammering you with a should. xoxo
January 12th, 2008 @ 5:55 pm
The 2 books that have influenced me the most in my life are:
Loving What Is by Bryon Katie
and
Ask and it is Given by Esther Hicks
Both changed my life!
Thanks for asking!
January 14th, 2008 @ 3:02 pm
This is crazy! I just discovered your blog today, and I made a piece of art that looks exactly like this yesterday! Incredible!