Jenny's Library Books October Edition

For the Time Being by Annie Dillard

Pilgrim at Tinker Creek by Annie Dillard

Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard

Always Apprentices: the Believer Book of Even More Writers Talking to Writers

To Show and to Tell by Phillip Lopae

The Writing Life by Annie Dillard

An American Childhood by Annie Dillard 

A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again by David Foster Wallace

Firebird by Mark Doty

Heaven's Coast by Mark Doty

How to be Both by Ali Smith

The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Richard Flanagan

The Lives of Others by Neel Mukherjee

I previously mentioned that I am auditing a class on creative non-fiction, and my stack of books is a clear reflection of that!  I needed to re-read how David Foster Wallace writes about tornadoes, and I was trying out Mark Doty for a muse but went with Annie Dillard (for a class assignment. I liked Doty but he was too death-based for my current family situation!).  Always Apprentices came up in passing in one of the readings for the class, and the Lopate is assigned reading as well.

The bottom three books are from the Booker shortlist! I did finish the Flanagan before he won the prize this year.  I did not end up finishing the Mukherjee and returned it to the library.

Jenny's Library Books Mid-September Edition

I can't believe it is the middle of September already!  I lost almost an entire week with the plague that is still going around my university, and I could hardly read, just sat around watching trashy tv and sleeping. 

This past month, a lot of my library books are required reading for a course I am auditing - Creative Non Fiction. It is taught by the talented Joni Tevis, author of The Wet Collection: A Field Guide to Iridescence and Memory.  I attended a reading from last year's Creative Non Fiction class, and was so impressed by the work the students did that I begged my way in this time around.  My goal is to get better at writing non-fiction, particularly figuring out how to decide on details and writing better endings.  I am enjoying it so far, and it has been helpful to see a class from the student perspective, at my university where we expect so much.

The books for Creative Non Fiction include (I left one in my office that I'll cover next time):
The Elements of Style (illustrated!) by Strunk, White, and Kelman
Swallow the Ocean by Laura M. Flynn
The Next American Essay
Tell It Slant: Writing and Shaping Creative Nonfiction

The other two books on the pile are both for communal reading purposes - The Lady in Gold is for my in-person book club next Monday (I need to get reading!) and Blue Plate Special is from an author who I will see at a reading in the spring.  I don't really need to read books by her yet but after almost buying this same book at a bookstore, I couldn't resist when it ended up on the New Books shelf.

Blue Plate Special: An Autobiography of My Appetites by Kate Christensen
The Lady in Gold by Anne-Marie O'Connor