Welcome to day four of my January post-a-day expirement! Today I have a confession to make: What you are reading is not really my writing project for the day. It still sits safely in my notebook, not quite ready for public consumption. Actually, that's not true.
I have a second confession: It's not so much that the piece isn't finished, it is that I am not ready for anyone to read it. A friend has been offering me daily writing prompts (thanks, friend!), which is lovely, because I find myself writing about things I might not normally touch on here. In combination with the pressure to have something ready to post each day, I find myself become more daring in my writing. But some things are a little too daring to feel safe.
Like the others, yesterday's prompt was fabulous. Once I started writing, it all just spilled out. It wasn't what I expected when I started - it went deep. It offers a glimpse into my own private brand of crazy (just think of it as The Nutburger Monologues). Though I adore you all for reading, I'm not quite ready to have it sitting out there at the top of my blog, sticking out like a raw nerve. Maybe in a few days or a few months, I will add it somewhere in the middle of things by typing it into a new post and backdating it. Maybe I won't. It will be like game. We'll see if anyone notices.
Meanwhile, in exchange for not revealing something about myself, I will reveal something else - a list of the 60 books (mostly novels) I've read this year. They say you can tell a lot about a person from the company she keeps. I happen to think you can learn a lot about a person based on her bookshelf. I didn't even edit out some of my more questionable reading choices! So, go ahead, mock Gypsy Magic if you want, but you and I both know that somewhere in your history there is something equally mockable! And don't mock too heartily, because I TOTALLY know how to put a curse on you now (provided I can find my eye of newt)!
If I get a chance (or hit a wall one day) I will go into more detail about my favorites. For now, I've marked the ones that left the greatest impression with an asterisk (or ten).
1. Charlaine Harris, Grave Sight
2. Libba Bray, Rebel Angels
3. Sarah Vowell, Take the Cannoli
4. *Yann Martel, Life of Pi
5. Meg Cabot, Shadowlands
6. Charlaine Harris, Shakespeare's Counselor
7. David Rakoff, Don't Get too Comfortable
8. *Imaculée Ilibigiza, Left to Tell
9. Meg Cabot, The Mediator 6
10. Poppy Z. Brite, Liquor
11. Sonia Singh, Ghost, Interrupted
12. *Travis McDade, The Book Thief: TheTrue Crimes of Daniel Spiegelman
13. *Mary Stewart, Nine Coaches Waiting
14. Dark Horse Comics, Tales of the Slayer
15. *Philip DePoy, The Devil's Hearth
16. Patrinella Cooper, Gypsy Magic
17. Lynda Kaplan Thaler & Robin Koval, The Power of Nice
18. Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Tales of the Slayer, Volume 1
19. Merlin Stone, When God was a Woman
20. Squire Rushnell, When God Winks at You
21. Sonia Singh, Bollywood Confidential
22. Sonia Singh, Goddess for Hire
23. *Jurek Becker, Jacob the Liar
24. *Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
25. Derek Wilson, Unquiet Spirit
26. *Sera Beak, The Red Book
27. *Philip De Poy, The Witch's Grave
28. Janice Taylor, Our Lady of Weight Loss
29. Jan Underwood, Dayshift Werewolf
30. *Colum McCann, Zoli
31. ???? [damn, you, messy handwriting!] Higgenbotham, Paganism
32. Mark Twain, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
33. MT Anderson, Thirsty
34. Calvin Trillin, About Alice
35. CL Bevill, Bayou Moon
36. Cherie Priest, Four and Twenty Blackbirds
37. *Kurt Vonnegut, A Man without a Country
38. *Khaled Hosseini, A Thousand Splendid Suns
39. Daniel Handler, The Basic Eight
40. Patricia Wrede & Caroline Stevemer, Sorcery and Cecilia
41. *Christine Wicker, Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town that Talks to the Dead
42. Norma Seely, Secrets of Harbor House
43. *Paulo Coehlo, The Witch of Portobello
44. *Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
45. *Paulo Coehlo, The Devil and Miss Prym
46. *Tim Guest, My Life in Orange
47. *Suzanne Simanaitis, Kaleidoscope
48. Oriah Mountain Dreamer, The Call
49. J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
50. *John U. Bacon, Cirque du Soleil: Igniting the Divine Spark
51. *Phillip DePoy, A Minister's Ghost
52. *Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz
53. Jim Butcher, Fool Moon
54. Lucius Shepard, Soft Spoken
55. Rob Sheffield, Love is a Mix Tape
56. Karen Armstrong, Muhammad
57. Kurt Vonnegut, Cat's Cradle
58. *Jeffrey Steingarten, The Man Who Ate Everything
59. Phil Stanford, Portland Confidential
60. Carolyn & David Roe, The Complete Papillon
7 comments:
the man who ate everything! hee hee hee. I heart Steingarten and his crazy obsessive ways.
I did my book list on All consuming (embarrassing books and all!) and I see a couple of ours overlap. ha! Gypsy Magic, even!
You don't have to backdate should you decide to post your thing you don't want at the top -- just post that one at midnight and for the next day at 12:15! (I have been thinking about this.)
BTW, I know it's only four days into it and I have no idea what I will post tonight, but I'm glad I let you talk me into this post-a-day business. Even though I post pretty regularly, it is a good push for me because I tend to hold onto things long past their period of relevance and this is a good reminder that there's always something new!
I love Steingarten too! I saw him on Iron Chef America after you left, by the way! I really need to get my mitts on his other book.
Ha! You too have read Gypsy Magic??? So you are prepared to counter curse me. One day when we're bored, maybe we can have some kind of magical smackdown. Just FYI in case you're thinking of giving me the evil eye, a friend recently brought me a talisman against that from her trip to Turkey!
Thanks fo the sneaky posting tip! And YIPPEEE to your daily posting resolution! We'll have to compare notes at the end of the month. Doing it last year resulted in some good epiphanies! I'll be curious to see what your experience with that is!
I just found out about the goodreads.com website. I played around with it a little yesterday, but I think I might take some time for it. I think we may only have 2 books that overlap. But the next book I have on my list is Neil Gaiman's Stardust. I know you like him-
Hi Aart!
Thank you so much for reminding me about the Paulo Coehlo blog. I have it over there in my link list, but had not visited it for ages until going over just now after reading your comment. His January 4 post immediately gave me some perspective on an inner dialogue I having about my January writing project. I will take that as a sign that I should go make more of a habit of visiting his blog! He really is one of my top favorites!
Thank you for visiting!
P.s. I took a peek at your blog too and enjoyed it!
Anne -
Very cool! I will have to take a look. I have been using allconsuming.net, but also just found that Facebook has a book tracking application too. As for overlapping books, I think we may have more before long! I've been perusing your book group lists for ideas! (That's what made me notice "St. Lucy's Home..." when I spotted it at Powell's - well that and the cover. I like the artwork!)
Thank you for the reading list. I'm voracious in my mind, but slow to consume. Regarding posting everything you write: I advise against it. Some writing needs time to age, some is just for us and a few close friends. Your blog is interesting to read BECAUSE you discriminate.
-Your writing buddy
Wendy - You're welcome! Good point about the posting!
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