Wednesday, March 26, 2014

What Are You Reading?

The snow seems happy to be melting.


I’ve been reading a lot lately, chronic reading really. Right now, I have three books half read: my morning book, my night book, and the manuscript I’m editing.

It’s making me miss school, where I first learned the art of narrative juggling. I miss talking about books, analyzing books, living in books. I think I need to join a book club or something.

I haven’t read this much since the summer of 2009 where I annihilated fifty novels in three months. I wrote my first novel after that.

Hopefully, I’m gearing up for another one those writing explosions. I’m apparently in the mass consumption phase of the writing process. Release must be close behind.

Either way, it’s been reminding me about what I like and don’t like about story telling. The way that I’m naturally drawn to character driven works, how I can’t connect to anything if I can’t connect to the people, what a good metaphor looks like, what a bad one looks like, dialogue that works, the irksomeness that is dialogue tags before dialogue, or the way words like “just,” “that,” or “literally” make my skin crawl when they cross that thin line between sparingly and every other sentence.

 I forgot how good reading was for teaching. I want to pursue my master’s in Creative Writing, but I don’t think that’s going to teach me how to write, only how to write better. Books are the best writing teachers, especially when you learn to separate the good ones from the bad ones and take in all their flaws and perfections as ammo for your own.

I haven’t kept up with my review series, yet. I still have a review for “Tilt” coming. Now add “The Archived” and “Eleanor and Park” to that list.

Here’s the part where I come to you for recommendations. I need titles people, books you love. I want to love them, too. Or politely hate them. Any genre really. I haven’t fallen in love with any recent mysteries or suspense books lately, so that could be fun. Let me peak in your awesome bookshelves and pilfer what strikes my fancy.


Seriously, Googling books is a drain on valuable reading time. Just point me in the right direction.  

4 comments:

  1. I'm not actively reading a book at the moment, however I just finished up "Brave New World" by Aldous Huxley. It's definitely worth the read.

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    1. Read the description, and it definitely looks interesting. Added to my list. Thanks!

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  2. I wish I could read more, but I can barely squeeze in enough time to write. The sad thing is that I write better when I'm reading something. I find they usually fuel each other.

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    1. Definitely. I have a hard time finding time to read for fun. I edit stuff all day long and then try to squeeze in some writing. So, because my recently read list still reads like a college syllabus, I've been carving out an hour a night and part of my Sundays to published novels--even though my editing brain still points out errors.

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