Currently reading...

My Mrs Dalloway (1925; this ed. 2000) copy I copped for ten bucks

I'm sitting on page 35 of 165.  It has been a slow read thus far as the narration itself is both here and there.  The last five or so pages read have finally introduced me to the mortality conscious nature of the novel; yes, this is subject matter that can be grey and intimidating but it's never too early in the day to contemplate life and agency.  

I watched The Hours earlier today, it is based off Virginia Woolf's depression and eventual suicide as well as the story of Mrs Dalloway and its connection to three generations, Woolf's included.  I liked the depiction and foresee how it will positively affect the duration of my reading.  The writing, as expected, is splendid indeed.

Seeds in the Black Earth (1988)

The above is a South African compiled anthology worth nearly 200 hundred pages of glorious, glorious poetry edited by a certain Brenda O'Brien... A book I happened to happen upon in my parents' library during the recent holidays.  The works span both the domestic and international, contemporary and classic.

I wonder if I'd be as committed to literature were it not for my folk and the literary environment they raised me in.  Whenever I visit home I discover a new world of wonder they had paved for me (and my siblings, of course) — 'tis a gratitude infinite.

10 Books That Stayed With You

The assignment: "List ten books that have stayed with you in some way. Don’t take but a few minutes and don’t think too hard — they don’t have to be the “right” or “great” works, just the ones that have touched you."

1) White Oleander - Janet Fitch

2) Black Skin, White Masks - Frantz Fanon

3) The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald

4) The Bluest Eye - Toni Morrison

5) Q&A - Vikas Swarup

6) Buck - Tamela Larimer

7) Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

8) The God of Small Things - Arundhati Roy

9) Autobiography of Red - Anne Carson

10) What We Talk About When We Talk About Love - Raymond Carver

Wow, this was incredibly difficult and compiled very hastily.  So many titles came to me the further I went down the list, but I stuck to putting down those that came to first and are a little more significant to me in some way or the other.

"Be kind to yourself while blooming."

"I am the lover and the loved,
home and the wanderer, she who splits
firewood and she who knocks, a stranger in the storm."

                 — Adrienne Rich

It's all so deeply personal.

I am not a Book Blogger.

I blog about books, or more aptly, I love to reflect on books (and such) that I've read.  I write these from a personal place with no end goal in sight, except to share my views with fellow lovers of literature.  My book posts aren't reviews either, however, I've received a couple of requests from authors that would like for me to review their upcoming or newly-published books.

Now, I have no objection to such requests, except maybe that they mostly read impersonal and they take not into consideration the type and style of blogging I do.  So when I read my fellow blogger Charlie's article (who is a self-proclaimed book blogger) I immediately felt compelled to share the piece here, on my own site.  I do this in the hopes that future visitors interested in working with me, stumble upon this little insert and re-consider my blog, their approach and whether this is the right space for their work.

I've never considered doing book reviews for current markets.  Although, I should mention that (having thought this through) I would be delighted to work with you based on a couple of premises that can be further dealt with via email correspondence.  Also, please know, I presently do not e-read books — I love paper too dearly, reading a book from its printed paper is as honest a telling you can get of its work.  

Here's Charlie's article:

How Not To Pitch A Book Blogger (In 9 Steps) by Carnelian Valley

her quaint notebook is about celebrating words and writers, so your work could easily find some sense of home here.  Let's chat!

Hamba Kahle, Madiba

Read here.

New books, new reads, new to-reads

Some of what I'm currently reading:

Bottom up: Trencherman, Eben Venter (2008; originally published in Afrikaans, 2006); Heart of Darkness, Joseph Conrad (2010 ed.; originally 1902); Nineteen Eighty-Four, George Orwell (1949)

I'm also attempting to start reading Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine (2007)

What is on my nightstand (and what I wish I were devouring instead): 

Bottom up: Sister Outsider, Audre Lorde (1984); Autobiography of Red, Anne Carson (1998)

Other new books:

Again, bottom up: Che Guevara (a biography), Jon Lee Anderson (2010, revised ed.); The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway (1987); Drown, Junot Diaz (1996); Tales of Mystery and Imagination, Edgar Allan Poe (2011 ed., originally 1908)

I wish I had Chimamanda Adichie's Americanah (2013) in this pile, too, but soon-soon.

   "I have good reason to be content, 
for thank God I can read and
 perhaps understand Shakespeare 
           to his depths." 

                               — John Keats

Currently reading...

A collection of shorts by a short story writer I absolutely adore: Alice Munro (1996).  In addition, to aid in overcoming this immovable writer's stonewall (writing fiction's hard labour, I say, it's a sweating and a bleeding) I'm reading contemporary writers influenced by Munro, too:  Diving Belles by Lucy Wood (2012); This Isn't The Sort of Thing That Happens To Someone Like You by Jon McGregor (2012).
I'm also reading Anne Sexton's posthumously published book of uncollected poems titled Words for Dr. Y (1997).