As promised: (books!)

A short preface: I have been a pretty serious student for the past five academic years (4 years undergrad L.A. studies graduating with 40+ extra credits and the past year spent DEEP in grad school). This meant having fewer opportunities than I would've liked to read exactly what I wanted. And now for the first time in about 4 years I have a giant stack of books on my nightstand that I got to choose! This makes me gratuitously happy. It's kind of ridiculous.

I just re-established and updated my goodreads account with my summer and fall reads so I have a good reference for the books I want to talk about.

Yesterday I finished reading The Eyre Affair. It was deliciously childish. The action never dipped too far into overbearing. I was surprised every time I put it down that the amount of "action" type stuff that had happened (as the snooty reader in me finds such things in most cases to be fluffy overkill). It reminded me of both Harry Potter (in it's complexity level and attention to detail) and Roald Dahl (in it's clearly playful and unashamedly ridiculous moments). It brought canon literature (perhaps a bit too classically wesatern/euro loaded) into a blissfully public and hilariously diluted cultural pastime. I thought the protagonist was a pleasantly strong female character although I could definitely feel that the book was not written by a woman. The world itself and the problems it presented are the true gems of this book (and hopefully the series!). It was dynamic and playful. Stylistic to the point of being unpleasant to some I am sure, but totally up my alley. And worth trying out if you want a ludicrous escape from academic ideas and conversations about literature.

The writing group's first meeting is drawing near and my mind is spinning like a beehive with wingfuls of ideas and anxiety. My short list of books/readings to bring looks like this:
Writing Down the Bones--N. Goldberg (my favorite book about writing to date)
(essay) Poetry is Not a Luxury--A. Lorde (she gave beautiful and precise words to what I have long believed about poetry)
Writing Without Teachers--P. Elbow (he uses cooking metaphors to great effect to illustrate writing processes)
(poem) A Ritual to Read Each Other--W. Stafford (I am going to post this poem later and write more about it)
Fruitflesh: Seeds of Inspiration for Women who Write--G. Brandeis
And a copy of the Evergreen State College Writing Center's yearly publication Inkwell (which I co-editor-in-chiefed last spring)
(I'll also be bringing copies of my chapbook but don't intend for them to be a focus of the meeting)

Making this list has actually put me in the mind that maybe this writing group should have a collective library of books about writing/for writers/suggested by other writers. Wouldn't that be amazing?

This list has also made me want to make separate post on a few of the resources listed. I will probably make corresponding posts for Writing Down the Bones (which is a truly phenomenal read), Poetry is not a Luxury, and A Ritual to Read Each Other. Also I think I should design a post around the article I wrote for Inkwell, perhaps feature another as well if it seems appropriate.

For the writing group I still need to hash out what I want the meeting to look like in case things oscillate toward the awkward. I also need to compile a list of games and activities I think writers would like to play/do.

Looks like I've got my work cut out for me! See you next time folks!