I have no intention of stopping writing. I could wax poetic about how I would surely shrivel into wee flaky bits should I put down the pen, but I probably wouldn’t. It’s much more likely that I would assume status melancholy, eat too much pizza and drink too much Cabernet, and would instead expand steadily until housebound. Barring traumatic brain injury, there is no real chance of me not writing at this point, because when I’m not avoiding writing it brings me great satisfaction. At times joy. I have some concerns about writing here as my primary outlet, given that there is an odd pressure to blogging. Gotta get something out. There isn’t a great deal of editing done on these posts, save me saving myself by ensuring I don’t come across as a complete imbecile. There’s even less rewrite, and while I think I’m a better writer than I was three years ago (please do not go back into the archives – no, no, begging – oooook), I need to write offline as well. Rumor has it that life beyond 350 words exists, and I’d like to live that life at times. Sadly, I was also born with little intellectual endurance, reaching toxic levels of work or creative exhaustion in record time. This made graduate school a hoot, let me tell you. Four full years of hoot.
This is a roundabout way of saying that I plan to continue to write here, because I love this site, and because my community of readers is a lovely, lovely group of people for whom I am very thankful (please see your comments from my last post. Lovely.) I just need to write more offline, as well and live life as I should, outside of pages and monitors and 140 characters, so that I have something to write about, no matter where I choose to do so.
Undoubtedly, reading will help, psychologically or otherwise. It has already. I’m proud to say that I am once again creating space in my life and apartment for books that I plan to keep. In the more immediate past, I’d read a book and quickly ensure it was donated. Packed up, out the door, not thought of again. I’m guessing stray volumes in my midst served as a reminder that I wasn’t the reader of yesterday, that individual books didn’t have partners on shelves. I’m trying to change this, answering a sincere call to return to days when I was passionate about reading, when my closet shelving overflowed and I had to stack books in the corner of my bedroom. I now have a small collection of books, very small, in fact, not enough to necessitate shelving yet. But they’ll get there.
Friends have been sharing their reading recommendations lately, mostly because I threaten to beat them senseless if they don’t. If so inclined, leave yours in the comments. Would love to hear what knocks your socks off.
38 Comments
Wild Swans:Three Daughters of China
To read? Anything you can get your paws on. Anything. Go wander the library. Heaven.
Reading recommendations? First, I must know what books you’ve already enjoyed (said the dorky librarian in training).
It’s all about balance, isn’t it? Let me know if you figure out the secret (also, then, please share the secret.)
You are a geek. Wait, you said dork? Neither here nor there.
Balance, yes. I will never find it.
Finn – find me a good library in DC and I’m there. Preferably one that doesn’t reek of urine. I’m honest, if little else.
I can tell you guys are skeered. Leave your damn recs, whatever they may be.
*straightens skirt*
There has of course been no better time to read Updike – his novels, particularly the Rabbit tetrology, astound, but you’d love his essays. “Due Considerations” is a lovely collection, as is “Just Looking,” a collection about art (I know, I know – trust me?). He has an astonishingly good collection about golf which, even if you don’t like golf, will make you love it. Really.
Joan Didion’s “Year of Magical Thinking” is at once gut-wrenching and remarkable, clear-eyed, brave. I almost mailed it to you last week, but you have other irons in the fire for now.
If you must needs get your fiction on, which you must (needfully), please, please read “Ironweed,” by William Kennedy. Hoboes! If you haven’t gotten to McCarthy’s “The Road” yet, do. When you do read “Blood Meridian” – and I know you will – you can write to me and tell me how it changed your life.
I’ll stop now and post recommendations under several different aliases in a vain attempt not to sound like a windbag.
Unfortunately, my recent readings are trite because by the time I get around to doing so, I’m up for something relaxing and untaxing to the mind. That’s not my normal style; given the opportunity, I’d happily pick up a crateload of Jung and wile away the day. However, in these 11-hour-workday weeks of late, I’ve burned up all the smartnesses and can be thankful I am able to hold on to a book let alone recognize the words inside.
I am glad you are continuing to write, but I do understand the need to have something outside; I often feel that way myself, but then I hammer out a blog post that takes me far too freaking long and afterewards decide that I can’t be bothered with the novella again tonight.
I finished the Road this weekend. Now Dillard and the lovely weasel. Wish we could discuss.
And you will have that shelf. You and I both know it.
More please.
Nathan, there is never, ever shame in reading Maxim. :)
Though Monkey King makes some excellent points, I must insist that you read Nabokov’s “Lolita,” and that if you find his style agreeable you try his “Speak, Memory” memoir. Formidable!
I think we both started blogging pretty much during the same year, during Blogging Generation Y, and I find it interesting that I wrote a similar post on my own blog. I am questioning myself and my blogging. I want to read more. I just joined that YouRead (or whatever it is called) social network, where you can see what all your fellow bloggers are reading. I was ashamed to learn — unless they are lying — how many books my friends are reading a month, while I cannot keep up reading blogs on my blogroll.
Perhaps something happens to you when you have blogged for about three years. You can’t quit because you are hooked, you have a virtual social life with blogging, and you enjoy the feedback and comraderie. It has become an integral part of your life. On the other hand, you start to wonder, like you do in a uneasy marriage, “Is this all there is?” Shouldn’t we be acting a little bit more mature and using our writing for practical purposes, like 99% of everyone else onlne, selling themselves and their “brands?”" Unfortunately, when you are a personal blogger, there really isn’t much to sell, other than yourself, and our silly little posts don’t have much value. It sort of bugs me to think of my blog this way, but maybe it is an inevitable progression, like graduating and realizing you need to get a job.
I recently enjoyed “Bloodletting & Miraculous Cures” by Vincent Lam although it hit a little too close to home, figuratively and literally. I have to confess it’s been the Johns Grisham and LeCarre for guilty pleasure. Not exactly literature for the ages.
The Twilight Series.
Just kidding! Although I did read it.
A book that I read years and years ago but have always remembered in detail is Geek Love by Katherine Dunn.
Hi Kris,
I’ve read your blog consistently for over a year but only de-lurk once in awhile. I love your writing style!
Do you know about GoodReads.com? You can post your book shelf and friend your friends to do the same (kind of a FaceBook, but with a purpose). Also interesting to surf around and see what random strangers are reading.
I have so many favorites, its hard to narrow it down:
Girl with a Pearl Earring
Memoirs of a Geisha
Glass Castle
Jane Eyre
The Tender Bar
Kite Runner
The Game – by Neil Strauss
The Stone Dairies
Anything by Emily Giffin – total chicklit but I like her books
Shadow in the Wind
Middlesex
The Red Tent
i’ve heard good things about Geek Love.
i recommend Fall on Your Knees by Ann-Marie McDonald – i couldn’t put it down.
Neil, this conversation requires booze. I can make it to NY in five if you’re free tonight.
I have successfully resisted both Twilight and – AND! – the 30-day Shred and will continue to fight the good fight, possibly on GoodReads! ;)
Keep the recs coming, luscious people and your aliases.
I am bringing all of my recommended books to that thingie I emailed you about. Hope you can make it out and pick yourself up something pretty. Or just have a drink. Whatever.
ohhhhh. i love this game:
no one belongs here more than you- miranda july
(a second vote for) the year of magical thinking- j.didion
Fun Home- Alison Bechdal
Reading, my favorite hobby. That’s why I visit here! I’m selfishly glad to hear that you are continuing to update the blog. I’ve been worried that you were thinking of dropping it.
I’ve recently read/reread some of the ‘classics’.
Tortilla Flat, Of Mice and Men, and Grapes of Wrath. A Steinbeck tour. All awesome, (3rd time for GOW).
Catcher in the Rye, JD Salinger. I’m not sure I really got this book, maybe I just can’t remember what it was like to be a wee young lad…
I’m in the middle of Duma Key by S. King. What can I say? I’ve loved his pop-culture references since the mid 80’s…
Playing for Pizza, Grisham. Light easy and funny.
I have a long commute and will listen to a lot of books on CD. Recently listened to J Didon Year of Magical Thinking, once I realized that it was not fact and not fiction I was horrified, what a riveting book.
In my opinion, nothing compares to the Color Purple.
Anything by Carl Hiassen, Christopher Moore, Terry Pratchett, Tom Freidman or P.J. O’Rourke.
i am a sedaris & augusten burroughs junkie. so any of them. Both When You Are Engulfed in Flames & A Wolf at the Table (their latest books) were great.
I recently just finished a fiction book about the caste system in India called the White Tiger, which was a really good, quick read.
Some of my favorites (you have probably read all of these, but whatever):
The Poisonwood Bible – Barbara Kingsolver
Middlesex – Jeffrey Eugenides
A Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
Clan of the Cave Bear – Jane Auel
Me Talk Pretty One Day – David Sedaris
It really depends on what you like to read. And how much time you have to read. And where you read. I read a wide variety of books, and it depends on my mood.
Kate Wilhelm is a great writer. Love all her stuff.
The Omnivore’s Dilemma by Michael Pollan is a really fascinating read.
The 19th Wife by David Ebershoff was really good.
I also have liked everything I’ve read by Curtis Sittenfeld, particularly American Wife.
If you’re looking for something quirky, I highly recommend the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. The first book is called The Eyre Affair.
I read a lot. Like, all the clerks at the library know me a lot. So if you can provide information about what types of books you enjoy, I might be able to help out with other suggestions!
I love the library! (although I’m in a smallish city in the west where urine is not typically smelled anywhere other than where it should be smelled)
I have enjoyed checking out the recommendations – it’s great to see what other people are reading.
I’m currently reading Bloodsucking Fiends by Christopher Moore. Funny. Another book by him is Lamb. VERY FUNNY.
Pillars of the Earth and World Without End were both worth the time.
And I just finished The Reader. Darn good book.
The other night I awoke in a sweat, stressed and anxious and convinced I was a character in the book I am reading. And no, sadly I’m not kidding.
Cloud Atlas (Mitchell)
you absolutely must read:
You shall know our velocity
by dave eggers.
Water For Elephants was a really great book as was The Time Traveller’s Wife, the Dogs of Babel and I’m a sucker for anything the Bret Easton Ellis writes…but you have to deal with the fact that most of the books are clearly products of the 80’s.
Infinite Jest. It took me forever to read, but it was soooo damn good.
Also, Outliers. A very quick read, but well worth it.
You would like Alan Bennett
The published works of Pablo Neruda
I am so boring. I am huge on biographies, classics etc., especially Jane Austen.
I would recommend Team of Rivals which has been mentioned so much recently in the stories about our President. I read it before I barely knew who Obama was, and I loved it.
i second the vote for david sedaris. witty and insightful, i feel like he will make your relationship with your mother seem normal.
i also saw a couple plugs for christopher moore. i literally just walked back from the library with “a dirty job”. my favorite by him
the book that most changed my life: maiden voyage by tania aebi
I haven’t read all the comments ahead of me and I don’t know what you’ve already read but here are five I always recommend:
1) The Time Traveler’s Wife
2) The History of Love
3) Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close
4) Sister of My Heart
5) Middlesex
for pure fun read the shopoholic series! and of course, slash’s autobiography…
Thank you all for your fantastic recs – please keep them coming!
Two great collections of short stories that I absolutely love for their minimalistic style are This Life She’s Chosen by Kirsten Sundberg Lunstrum and How to Breathe Underwater by Julie Orringer. Both are full of beautifully written stories that I think you’d appreciate. The writing inspired me.
*Lynda in the very first comment is spot on. Wild Swans is absolutely amazing. If anyone ever claims to know anything at all about China, I immediately ask them if they have read that book. If they say “no” then they are lying.
*For some reason, just based on reading this blog for the last couple of months, I really think you’d like Sarah Vowell. She writes humor but about historical topics. Take the Cannoli is a good one to start with.
*My favorite books of all time though are “His Dark Materials” by Phillip Pullman (The Golden Compass is the first book of three)It’s fantasy with philosophy coming out it’s ears.
I never comment because I am technologically retarded, but I love your blog and decided to jump into the deep end on this one just to recommend “The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao” by Junot Diaz – an amazing, tragic read.
Enjoy!
After dropping the ball several nights in a row, here, Kris, is the list we chatted about.
Because you asked me for essays, that is what I’m restricting it to. Well, essays and essay-like works such as memoirs.
I’m one of those people who like Milan Kundera’s essays better than his fiction, probably because his fiction is usually grounded in ideas anyway, and I find that the essays express them better.
Chris Robison’s memoir about his life with Asberger’s Syndrome, Look Me in the Eye. He is Augusten Burrough’s brother.
Daniel Tammet’s Born on a Blue Day. Another memoir about life with Asberger’s. Hey, is that a pattern forming?
John Updike essays. He wrote about everything. I remember one funny one about his first big book deal. It might be a story. Anyway, he celebrates by dancing the frug in his living room.
Robertson Davies, particularly his essays “Reading” and “Writing.”
V.S. Pritchett’s memoirs “A Cab at the Door” and “Midnight Oil.”
Paul Watkins, Stand Before Your God, a memoir about being an American boy who is deposited in an English board school.
Joan Didion, Slouching Toward Bethlehem.
Flannery O’Connor, Mystery and Manners.
Sarah Vowell, Assassination Vacation. She is hilarious, and I lurrve her. Seriously, if you read this, Sarah, I really do.