So Many Books: A 2012 Reading List

When I was at Bennington for graduate school, we were required to read around 100 books in two years.  Bennington’s MFA Program motto is famous: “Read 100 books. Write one.”  I had to put myself on a very rigorous reading schedule to accomplish this and for the most part, I did.  In the years since, I’ve scaled back a bit, but have always tried to keep some sort of reading “list.”  Call it OCD (I love lists) or habit (grad school training), but at the end of every year, I compile a new, revised reading list for the next year.  This list usually changes some depending on a new book I’ve heard about or if a friend has recently come out with something, but more or less I try to work my way through my list.

 

 

This year’s list (for 2012) is comprised of books I’ve been wanting to read, books I’ve mostly read and really want to finish, or books I’ve skimmed and need to make the time to actually sit down and enjoy.  Reading my way through this list is one of my top New Year’s Resolutions.  What better way to enter a new year than with the promise of a good story, a poem, or uncovering a new writer?

 

Must Read, 2012 Edition:

 

Prose:

 

Blue Nights by Joan Didion
Don’t Kill the Birthday Girl by Sandra Beasley
The Ticking is the Bomb by Nick Flynn
Lunch in Paris by Elizabeth Bard
The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan
Amen, Amen, Amen by Abby Sher
The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbery
Unpacking the Boxes by Donald Hall
Anne Frank: The Book, The Life, The Afterlife by Francine Prose
Happy by Alex Lemon
Elizabeth and Hazel: Two Women of Little Rock by David Margolick
The Wilder Life by Wendy McClure
20 Under 40: Stories from the New Yorker
The Bill From by Father by Bernard Cooper
Every Day by the Sun: A Memoir of the Faulkners of Mississippi by Dean Faulkner Wells
The Mammy by Brendan O’Carroll
The Writer’s Notebook: Craft Essays from Tin House
Hungry Town by Tom Fitzmorris
A Star Called Henry by Roddy Doyle

 

Poetry:

 

Belfast Confetti by Ciaran Carson
For the Living and the Dead: Poems and a Memoir by Tomas Tranströmer
Temper by Beth Bachmann
The McSweeney’s Book of Poets Picking Poets
Facts for Visitors by Srikanth Reddy
The Kingdom of Ordinary Time by Marie Howe
Black Blossoms by Rigoberto Gonzalez
Stupid Hope by Jason Shinder
Milk Dress by Nicole Cooley
Special Orders by Edward Hirsch
Cocktails by D.A. Powell
A Village Life by Louise Gluck
Elegy by Mary Jo Bang
In the Surgical Theatre by Dana Levin
Pierce the Skin by Henri Cole
The Diminishing House by Nicky Beer
The Half-Finished Heaven: The Best Poems of Tomas Tranströmer
Letter to a Stranger by Thomas James
The Living Fire by Edward Hirsch
Domestic Violence by Eavan Boland

 

I’m also thinking about returning to some of my most-loved children’s books.  I feel that the books that we read as children shaped us in the way that no other books can: we learn from them, grow from them, try on their identities.  Some of the books that I would read again are:

 

The Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder
The Secret Garden by Eliza Hodgson Burnett
Daphne’s Book by Mary Downing Hahn
Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

 

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Another related resolution that I’d like to add is inspired by the NPR article, “A Poem a Day: Portable, Peaceful, and Perfect.”  I love the idea of beginning the day with a poem and I find myself breathing easier whenever I read and then sit with a poem.  I think that doing so would make my day more peaceful, perfect.

 

A Community of Writers, A Community of Books

Taken in my room at Bennington, Jan. 2007

 

 

I am almost finished with the writing of my second manuscript (the first, The Glass Crib, is due out from Zone 3 Press in September).  I’ve been working on it steadily since January 2010 and have about 41 pages that I feel good about.  I’ve been keeping this second manuscript — the actual focus of it — a secret for a multitude of reasons, but if you’ve read some of the poems from it in journals, I think you might have a inkling of what it’s about.

 

I’m both excited and dreading hopping back on the merry-go-round of book contests.  For those of you who have done it, it’s such an arduous, albeit hopeful, process.  My first book was a finalist/semi-finalist for 6 contests, which was both rewarding and frustrating (insert the “always the bride” cliche here).  It took me almost 2 years to write it and about 1 1/2 years of sending it out to find a suitable home (a home which I absolutely adore).  I have no idea what to expect this time, because each manuscript/reader/judge is so different.  Of course, we all want to our manuscripts to be selected straight out the gate, but that so rarely happens.  If this manuscript gets picked up in the same amount of time as my first, I’ll throw a party.  No joke.

 

After grad school, it has felt a times like I’m writing in a vacuum.  I’m out of the “bubble” of grad school (and for me, even undergrad — I had such an amazing time there and feel very lucky to have been able to get both a BA and MFA in Creative Writing & Literature and work with wonderful teachers at both).  The first year out of Bennington’s MFA program, I had no idea what to do with myself, especially as my writing community dwindled and dwindled as the people I knew and loved here in Houston graduated from Houston’s MFA/PhD program and moved away.

 

However, little by little, I’ve made the transition and now when I look around, I have my own community created not by being thrown together in classes and such, but out of true friendships and love of language and books and everything in between.  I like coming out of my little nest of books and paper and tea to talk to other writers and share new work, ideas, or new books we’ve just read.  I can’t think of anything worse than living like Emily Dickinson and if that means I’ll never be Emily Dickinson, than so be it.

 

Recently, I have swapped manuscripts with a poet-friend of mine and also have a handful of other writer-friends that have agreed to read over my manuscript for me.  I am in awe of how gracious they all are and that I do have such a community to turn to again and again.

 

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I think that in addition to a “people” community, we as writers (and readers in general) also build a community of books.  At last count (last year, when my husband conceived the plans for building our built-in bookcases), there are over 800 books in this house.  I’m reading a hodgepodge of books right now: books for research for the manuscript, others for fun, others for cooking, others I’m re-reading for the zillionth time.  Here are a few I’m reading:

 

Trouble in Mind by Lucie Brock Broido

Nothing In Nature Is Private by Claudia Rankine

Gumbo Tales: Finding My Place at the New Orleans Table by Sara Roahen

My Father’s Daughter by Gwyneth Paltrow