WHERE I GO
Given resources and opportunity, I would venture far. As it is, I venture far anyway--not by plane, boat, train or auto, but on foot through my camera lenses, and seated in the pages of books. Whenever I go, I walk. Wherever I go, I look. And when I must stay put, I read--and thereby go without going. No matter how I do it, it's good. It's going.
I ask questions similar to those I ask about the pictures on my calendar (see Who I Am) of the books I read. The books I like use language to create a luminous sense of place and striking, larger than life characters, in a voice that makes me (who doesn't dance) want to do the cha-cha-cha.
Well-written books take me around the bend of unknowing to the place where anything is possible.
I love authors who extract the soul of a journey from the distillate of prose. I love language. I love to level and bank words to create winding ways that curve out of sight. Then I can explain what it's like to be there, how it feels, who's traveling, what happens along the way, where the rabbits hide, and where the journey ends.
I think of this as prose for the tuned ear. It's what I love to read and what I aspire to write.
WHAT I'VE READ LATELY
Over the past seven years I've read, on average, 50 books per year. Perilously few of these books have lit the fuse of my imagination and resulted in fireworks. Those few are marked below with asterisks (which look a little like sparklers). Should you happen on this page in search of a recommendation, that's it. Read these first. And let me know what you think.
JANUARY
Lillian Boxfish Takes A Walk Kathleen Rooney
FEBRUARY
Moonwalking With Einstein Joshua Foer
MARCH
Doxology Nell Zink
The Wise Man's Fear Patrick Rothfuss
Train Dreams Denis Johnson
APRIL
Sula Toni Morrison
Blessed Nancy Guthrie
Hunting Mister Heartbreak Jonathan Raban
MAY
The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy
Lincoln in the Bardo George Saunders
JUNE
The Man Who Invented Fiction William Egginton
Jude: Contending for the Faith in Today's Culture Jackie Hill Perry
Olive, Again Elizabeth Strout
The Optimist's Daughter Eudora Welty
JULY
How to Know a Person David Brooks
Laurus Eugene Vodolazkin
Virgin and Other Stories April Ayers Lawson
AUGUST
Maisie Dobbs Jacqueline Winspear
SEPTEMBER
Look Alive Out There Sloane Crosley
OCTOBER
Before the Coffee Gets Cold Toshikazu Kawaguchi
Easter Everywhere Darcey Steinke
NOVEMBER
Desperate Characters Paula Fox
A Velocity of Being Maria Popova & Claudia Bedrick, ed.
Anna Karenina Leo Tolstoy
DECEMBER