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Sunday, November 24, 2002 11:15 a.m.
Hello and yes, another two weeks at least have passed since last I updated. I knew I'd never be good at keeping up with this. I'm a slacker yes I am.
This week I'm thinking of several women writers I've longed to meet and know and emulate (even though I know it's just their writing I've fallen in love with, I know it I do).
Novel: As a kid, I loved all of Robin McKinley's books of adventure and fairy tales. I loved them because the women were neither beautiful nor frail. The women were heroes. Maid Marian in her retelling of Robin Hood, The Outlaws of Sherwood Forest is a crack shot. Beauty, in her first retelling of Beauty and the Beast, (she's written two) is clumsy and unnattractive and smart and strong and practical. The Hero and the Crown is just a ripping good story. I revisit these books with much love and affection at least once a year. Don't be afraid of genre writing! Don't be afraid of young adult labels! Oh, and as a bonus, visit Robin McKinley's website for lots of fun reading. She even obsseses over Buffy. She's my hero.
Another lady hero of mine: Elizabeth Bishop. Her Complete Poems is, I think, my choice for the one book I would choose if stranded on a desert isle (and forced to choose one book). Complex, riveting, wry, and hard to know, her poems are. I find myself attempting to copy her every time I sit to write. I'm not sure this is a habit I wish to shake.
I fell madly and completely in love with Pam Houston after first reading her book of stories, Cowboys Are My Weakness.
I may well fall madly and completely in love with Sarah Lindsay when I get my hands on her first book of poems, Primate Behavior. I heard her read three poems a few nights ago and she, my friends, was enthralling. Here's her poem "World Truffle."
Them womens are all super fine.
Sunday, November 10, 2002 11:38 a.m.
Oh dear, it's been awhile since I last updated this page. I've been busy and blue. This week I picked mostly books I've talked up every place I can and I figure they certainly do belong in my book recommendation page.
Novel: Tim O'Brien's novel? short stories? fictional memoir? The Things They Carried may well be one the best most important books (to me) I've ever read.
Short stories: My buddy is reading these now and I've been meaning to pick up again with this book--I haven't made it all the way through. It's fat. Good-o. The Stories of John Cheever.
Poems: One of my all-time favorite books of poems is the late great William Matthew's Selected Poems and Translations. My copy is bedraggled and dog-eared. Yours will be too if you buy it.
Book that I want: I saw this one on another buddy's amazon wishlist (and, by the way, amazon is making me want to barf with the new selling of clothes thing they got happening over there). It's a Buffy studies book. How could I NOT want this so so much?
I don't have the werewithall just now to go figure out amazon links for all them books. If you got this far and you want one of em, I reckon you can figure out how best to procure a copy, no?
Sunday, October 20, 2002 05:44 p.m.
One of my all-time favorite novels is Keri Hulme's odd book The Bone People. If you care about such things, it won the booker prize--I think in 1985.
I will read anything Barry Lopez writes. He is a naturalist and writer and his stories and essays are part poetry, part science, and full of soul. Here's Desert Notes.
Robert Hass's translations of the great Haiku masters: Basho (my pup is his namesake), Issa, and Buson are just marvelous. Here they all are in The Essential Haiku.
And this week I am wanting The Sibley Guide to Bird Life and Behavior. Just had a great little talk with birdwatchers Frances and Jeff and this book comes highly recommended.
Saturday, October 12, 2002 07:18 p.m.
Here are this weeks recommendations:
Helen Dewitt's brilliant The Last Samurai
Li Young-Lee book of poems The Rose
Ted Chiang's long anticipated first book of stories Stories of Your Life and Others
And this week the book I really really want but don't have: Jhumpa Lahiri's Interpreter of Maladies
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