Here are a few of the books I read this year, during the life of the blog so far, in no particular order. Happy to answer questions or comments about any of these, as always.
Nonfiction:
- The Brief Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks*, Rebecca Skloot
- Switch, Chip and Dan Heath
- One Person/Multiple Careers, Marci Alboher
- My Reading Life, Pat Conroy
- The Gifts of Imperfection, Brené Brown
- The Creative Habit, Twyla Tharp
- On Writing, Stephen King*
- The Writing Life, Annie Dillard
Fiction:
- Honoring Juanita, Hans Ostrom
- The Atlas of Love, Laurie Frankel
- Big Machine, Victor LaValle
- Great House, Nicole Krauss
- Pictures of You, Caroline Leavitt
- Under Heaven, Guy Gavriel Kay
- Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self, Danielle Evans
- A Thread Of Sky, Deanna Fei
- Take Me Home, Brian Leung
- Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
- The Calligrapher’s Daughter, Eugenia Kim
- Edinburgh, Alexander Chee
- A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, Betty Smith
And there are a number of books I love to reread, too. Here are a few:
- Three Junes, Julia Glass
- Straight Man and Empire Falls, Richard Russo
- Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbon
- I Capture the Castle, Dodie Smith
- The Guernsey Potato Peel Pie and Literary ventolin pills Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows
- A Homemade Life, Molly Wizenberg
- Most books by Guy Gavriel Kay
- The Sum of Our Days, Isabel Allende
- The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants quartet, Ann Brashares
- A Severed Wasp, Madeleine L’Engle
- Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott
- Tender at the Bone and other food memoirs, Ruth Reichl
And by request, a few of the writerly sites I’ve been reading.
- Koreanish, by Alexander Chee (check out his entry on the novel!). He doesn’t post very often, but when he does….ah. My model for blog entries as well-written essays.
- Tea and Cookies, by Tara Austen Weaver (love her description of her writing process)
- Occasionally, I check in at Advice to Writers for inspiration, a sort of kick-in-the pants to suck it up and get going.
- Dear Sugar at The Rumpus’s advice column”Write Like A MF” is already a classic.
- New Twitterquaintance Christine Lee Zilka already has an MFA, and is writing her novel at 80,000 Words.
Look for the “others’ private MFA” series, coming right up!
thank you for the mention! 🙂 I am now curious as to what you think of the books you read–like, maybe one line to describe?
Thanks for reading, Christine! Yes, I will post a later version with commentary. Funny thing: I think this list is about reporting progress–useful for me, perhaps, but much less useful for readers. More to come! Thanks!
How fun to see your reading list Tamiko (I love the Sisterhood series too)! Now I’m inspired to add some of these titles to my pleasure reading pile, which I finally have time for again after completing my dissertation! I just finished Paule Marshall’s Browngirl, Brownstones, which I’ve long been meaning to read, and loved it.
Thanks for reading, Anantha! I love the Sisterhood series, too. Will add commentary in a later post. Oh, and I forgot Victor LaValle’s crazy and fascinating novel, Big Machine. (Will update in a sec.) Check it out! And congrats on finishing the diss! Hope good things are in store for you next.