1. What are you reading right now?
2. What books or authors made such an impression on you that they virtually changed your life (or at least the way you think about life)?
3. What book(s) do you want to read or think you should read but haven’t? And why not?
4. That book that you have inside of you, the one that’s just screaming for you to write it- what is it’s title?
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October 5, 2007 at 4:57 pm
shewolfy728
What fun! A discussion about one of my favorite things - books!
1. Well, let’s see. I am actually between books right now, having gone on a bit of a reading binge for the last few weeks, especially while I was on vacation, but the ones in my backpack are a fantasy novel/mystery called Wraith, and another fantasy called Magic Study. I will probably start the first of these later today.
2. I have read so very many books that this is a hard one. When I was young, the book Karen, about a girl with cerebral palsy, made an impression on me, especially in the matter of faith. As I grew older and read more, of course Tolkein set me on the road to reading fantasy, which has been a preoccupation ever since, and Patricia McKillip’s Riddlemaster of Hed series also pushed me along those lines. Madeleine L’Engle’s books - almost all of them always gave me food for thought, and I still reread some of them. I think that this has made me more open to life’s little mysteries and joys. In the last few years, the book The Tao of Pooh caught my attention, as well as several books about living life one day at a time - not any one specifically, but just bits and pieces from lots of books. Meditations for Living in Balance is a book I like to keep handy to read when I feel I need a lift - there is a companion volume called Meditations for Women Who Do Too Much. Golly, I’m getting carried away here - I will say that usually the right book has come along at the right time as I find my way through life.
3. I really think I should read Jane Austen. I have tried, but Pride and Predjudice just doesn’t grab me. I am ashamed to say that I also haven’t read as many of Shakespeare’s plays as I think I should, although I love the ones I have read. And then there’s Issac Asimov - I haven’t read the Foundation Trilogy. For a fantasy/sci-fi person, this is terrible. They are on my to-read list, though.
4. Which one? The young adult book about bullying, that one is A Little Faith. The two fantasy novels don’t have titles, for some reason, but most of their plots are worked out. The one my husband wants to collaborate on with me is a mystery/romance/humor novel with the tentative title of Yoga With Dogs. Now I need a little more self- discipline to sit down and actually get the stories in my head onto my computer….
Thanks for the chance to be long-winded. I can’t wait to read what some of the others answer to this quiz!
-Jane (She Wolf)
October 5, 2007 at 6:57 pm
jodhiay
1. Beauty Within The Beast, by Stephen Stringham. It’s about the author’s experience in raising three black bear cubs in Alaska. We have bears where I live and knowing their behavior a little better makes me feel safer when hiking.
2. Anne Frank. I first read her diary when I was a teenager and even then it amazed me that such a wonderful voice was silenced like that.
Judy Blume. My mom gave me a copy of “Are You There God, It’s Me Margaret” when I was ten, probably to shut me up when I kept seeing ads for sanitary napkins and asking, “But what are they for?” It blew my mind when I found out and I had a million questions for my mom when I was done. Blume’s other books just rang so true for me, too. If you’ve gotta lose your innocence, she’s not a bad guide to the grown-up world.
The Catcher In The Rye: Holden Caulfield is probably the first literary character I felt I completely understood, to the point where it was scary.
Night, by Elie Wiesel. The only book I’ve ever thrown across a room because it hurt too much to read at many points. Totally worth finishing.
3. I tried to get through Middlemarch and just couldn’t do it. I swear I tried! And I keep thinking I should read the Bible from a purely literary perspective and have the same problem.
4. Shoot, I’m so lost on that front I don’t even have a title.
October 5, 2007 at 8:50 pm
Trisha aka Cosmicdancer
1. Like Shewolfy, I’ve just packed 3 novels into my holiday time, so am resting - BUT I have started Delia Falconer’s The Lost Thoughts of Soldiers (not sure I’ll finish it, though), am part way through Marcella Polain’s The Edge of the World and have just bought Richard Flanagan’s The Unknown Terrorist. All Australian books, btw. Bought Richard’s after hearing him speak at the Ubud Writers’ Festival. Very inspiring, straight-talking and controversial!
2. This is really hard! There’ve been so many. The French children’s classic Le Petit Prince; Barbara Farmer’s A Body of Water - a must for writers; and almost any poetry but especially Gerard Manley Hopkins, Walter de la Mare.
3. I really want to read all of Proust’s Remembrance of Times Past. We studied one book in French at Uni, hundreds of years ago.
4. Psyche’s Goblet - a study of women’s creativity, with biographies of 4 West Australian women creatives. A mixture of memoir (from my own involvement in different spheres) and a leading woman in each - except writing which will draw widely from some of the amazing women writers we have in Western Australia. Mapped out, sitting not-so-patiently while I finish a history of the Fellowship of Australian writers in WA - a PhD thesis due by the end of this year!
Yes, thanks for the chance to be reflective about this!
October 5, 2007 at 10:34 pm
lorigloyd
At the moment, I am currently reading Healing with Whole Foods by Paul Pitchford. It is one of the best books on holistic health that I’ve come across.
What book or author has changed my life? Hmmmm, I will have to give that some thought. If you want to know what authors have had an effect on my creative life, that’s easier– anything written by James Michener. I wouldn’t call his books classics, but they are good stories told well and that’s all I really want to be able to do.
I have this idea that some day I will read through all the great English language classics. But I get pulled away by other books. For example, today, I picked up a copy of Sun Tzu’s Art of War at the library. I know, strange. Can’t explain the urge to read it.
The book I have rolling around– well, actually there are two. One would be a collection of essays on the broad theme of women’s spirituality. The other would be a trashy romance novel with a supernatural theme. I know, again, strange.
Anyway, I’ve been offline today because I took the day off from work, and I and my camera went on an “artist’s date”. More to come on that later.
Later, L.
October 6, 2007 at 2:32 pm
espirit07
These are tough questions! Currently, I’m not reading any book. I tend to go through spells of reading. The most recent book was The Poetics of Space (a classic look at how we experience intimate places). I tend to read books that look deep into the complexities of life. There is one book that I read over and over because it’s just fun to ponder it’s quirky stories, Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman.
The books that have had the greatest impact and created change in my life are vastly different. As a teenager, I was profoundly moved by Call of the Wild by Jack London. I became more interested in the author’s life and as I grew into a young woman, I shaped aspects of my own life to be adventurous like Jack’s. I even wrote a series of love letters to him in my 30s that I’ve often thought of publishing. Other books that changed my life have included: A Gift From the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh, Meditations by Marcus Aurelius, The Artist’s Way by Julia Cameron, and Eternal Echoes by John O’Donohue to name a few.
I’d like to read more books written from other centuries. Years ago, I lived near a rare book store that allowed you to sit and read on big, overstuffed chairs. I’d go down an aisle on a subject of interest and then pick the first book that grabbed me. For example, I read a book published in the early 1600s, Foole upon Fool by Robert Armin who was perhaps the single person to have most dramatically affected William Shakespeare’s work. The book was about how fools actually behaved. Apparently, he was also a leading actor in Shakespearan plays.
Like most, there are a couple of books in me that want me to shape and write them. However, one book I actually started writing four years ago after a dream keeps calling me back to finish it. The book’s title is I Can Hear the Grapes Speak, a book about an odd friendship between two unlikely women and the lesson of learning that all things on earth speak their own unique language that we can hear if we’re willing to listen from her heart.
October 7, 2007 at 7:00 pm
Cheshire
As one can see, these are important questions! I am pondering and will post my comments on Sunday. Until then,
Cheshire D
As promised,
1. What am I currently reading? Just starting the 8th book of a series by Jim Butcher. It’s the series that the SciFi channel called “The Dresden Files.” I started reading those novels this summer in a post-Harry Potter doldrum. So if you like the first Harry, you’ll probably like Harry Dresden. Just be warned–it is an adult series.
2. Books that changed my life? Hmm. No. Books add immense pleasure to my life but none have changed my life in the ways that can happen when a significant person enters your life. Two that did have strong emotional resonances for me were: “The Hero Within” by Carol Pearson (about archetypes.) In the middle of reading it I wrote a poem that is still one of my favorite poems. And “Women Who Run With the Wolves” by Clarissa Pinkola-Estes. I highlighted many paragraphs in her book. The first time I have ever marked in a book!
3. Books I should read but haven’t? None. I don’t do “shoulds” anymore. Although I have a list of books to read when I am confined to a rocking chair and can’t hike the mountains. All those Star Trek and Dr Who novels which have been published in the past 20 years. I stopped reading them after about number 30. I realized I was buying them (1 or 2 per month were being published) but not reading them. They were sitting on my bookshelf, gathering dust. I had lost interest in actually reading them. I was too busy with life itself.
4. Title of a book I would write? No titles yet. A vague idea lurking in the back of my mind though. A non-fiction book, something about Tibetal mandalas.
October 7, 2007 at 7:13 pm
cheshire7
P.S.
5. Two books I wish I had written! “Enchantress from the Stars” by Sylvia Engdahl and “Godsfire” by Cynthia Felice. Both are science fiction novels.