Internet Lovelies

Isn’t it funny that this is what happens to us? That even if you love books, if you start to dedicate your life to them, a light goes out, somehow. You come to know them with your brain rather than your soul. Maybe it’s just one more sad example of how you’ve grown up... But it isn’t the least bit of hyperbole for me to say that as an adult who is a voracious reader, I know that I am going to spend the rest of my life not quite managing to love a book the way I loved Anne [of Green Gables], to read it the way I did the first, second, thirty-fifth time. I know that the rest of my reading life is just a thinly-disguised effort to forge a path back to that, but I’ll never get there.

Michelle Dean, Link

using an exclamation point means never having to spell things right.

Adam Robinson, Link

Novellas are like little yummy store samples of the great cheeses of fiction.

Lisa @ BaffledBooks, Link

Fiction will not hasten the decline and fall of the American Empire. A Congressional inquiry into the president's reading habits isn't necessary. Novels are neither a sedative nor a terrorist plot. They are stories about how we have lived, live now and may live in the future, offering perspectives a few more politicians and pundits might consider exploring.

Robert Gray, Link

So it's on my mind this week not only how much I owe to other writers, but also how much I owe it to myself to be selective in what I read, especially as I age and have less time to indulge in books. I used to read everything that came my way, start to finish, but lately I look at the stack of over 50 to-be-read books in my home, and don't feel motivated to open most of them. I am craving a new conversation, or a different one than the ones I have been having in the last few years, and I think it is the writer in me more than the reader that is craving inspiration. While I do read for escape, these days escape-reading bores me, and instead I want to be astounded by the creativity in what I read.

Jessica Goodfellow, Link

Things and stuff:

I'm behind on the 100 books thing, but it's not like I'm not reading anything. Actually, it's more like I'm reading too much. At least that's what I'll tell myself. Here are the books I'm currently in the middle of reading:

The Gospel of Anarchy, Justin Taylor
Bed, Tao Lin
American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis
No One Belongs Here More Than You, Miranda July
The Other Wind, Ursula Le Guin
The Magician King, Lev Grossman
Mr. Peanut, Adam Ross

These are all the things I'm reading ALL AT ONE TIME. Not to mention the things I gave up on reading just last week. Snuff by Palahniuk and Freya of the Seven Isles by Joseph Conrad. One was all "porn, boobies, blah blah," and the other was all "sailors, damsels, yar yar." No time for blah or yar.

Other stuff:

Adam Ross, mentioned above, will be reading at my alma mater this month! Pretty cool. I'll be going, granted I can drive from work to Hollins in 15 minutes. Who'd of thunk working in a library could be such a literary cock block.

Lydia Davis will also be reading there in December! Just when I start wishing I lived in NYC or Portland just for all the literary goings on, things start happening in Roanoke.

But no, I still want to move to Portland.