Thank you to all who have responded so far with reading suggestions. I certainly have a lot to consider! As expected, my sister made some excellent suggestions right off the bat. Then she and I chatted (online) back and forth for quite a while, so I have several suggestions of hers I'm considering, but have actually already put Stephen King's The Green Mile in my amazon.co.uk shopping basket (to buy with some of the gift certificate money she and Dad provided for Christmas). I'm also considering picking back up the Harry Potter series (Andrew and I read the first book aloud to one another, alternating chapters. We thoroughly enjoyed it and got through the first three chapters or so of the second book before abandoning it in sea of moving-overseas-stress!). I'm also considering Stephen Kings' Bag of Bones and The Girl Who Loved Tom Gordon. Growing up, Kim was always the reader in the family (although I've been a writer since I was about 3 and had her transcribe "plays" for me) and I have always deferred to her judgement on books. Plus, she's a HUGE King fan.
My mother-in-law has suggested some historical non-fiction which sounds good and will go on the to-read list. Titles she suggested include Jim Bishop's The Day Christ Died and Those Who Love by Irving Stone (who also wrote The Agony and the Ecstasy). Andrew has also chimed in with some good suggestions, including, of course, a re-read of the LOTR trilogy, which I also put in the amazon basket.
Last night I also perused the library's literature section and picked up Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neal Hurston (a Floridian, incidentally), Shakespeare's King Lear (I know the story, but would love to read it again!) and Mallory's Morte D'Arthur.
Today I began reading Ray Bradbury's Zen in the Art of Writing. It's a collection of essays Bradbury wrote over about a 30-year period about the art and craft of writing. You may know that Bradbury is an accomplished writer of novels, movies and short stories, including The Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes. I got through the introduction and first two essays today, but had to stop about a page in to get out my highlighter! It's wonderful and will be a quick read. I'll sare a few of my highlights with you and then my favorite Edna St. Vincent Millay poem. Enjoy!
But what would happen [if you stopped writing for a few days] is that the world would catch up with and try to sicken you. If you did not write every day, the poisons would accumulate and you would begin to die, or act crazy, or both. You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you.
* * *
I have learned, on my journeys, that if I let a day go by wihtout writing, I grown uneasy. Two days I am in tremor. Three and I suspect lunacy. Four and I might was well be a hog, suffering the flux in a wallow. An hour's writing is tonic. I'm on my feet, running in circles, and yelling for a clean pair of spats.
(p. xiii)Every morning I jump out of bed and step on a landmine. The landmine is me.
After the explosion, I spend the rest of the day putting the pieces together.
(p. xv). . . if you are writing without zest, without gusto, without love, without fun, you are only half a writer . . . For the first thing a writer should be is - excited.
(p. 4)The other six or seven drafts are going to be pure torture. So why not enjoy the first draft, in the hope that your joy will seek and find others in the world who, reading your story, will catch fire, too?
(p. 7)What can we writers learn from lizards, lift from birds? In quickness is truth. The faster you blurt, the more swiftly you write, the more honest you are. In hesitation is thought. In delay comes the effort for a style, instead of leaping upon truth which is the only style worth deadfalling or tiger-trapping.
(p. 13)
And here is one of my all-time favorite poems:
To the Wife of a Sick Friend
by Edna St. Vincent Millay
Shelter this candle from the wind.
Hold it steady. In its light
The cave wherein we wonder lost
Glitters with frosty stalactite,
Blossoms with mineral rose and lotus,
Sparkles with crystal moon and star,
Till a man would rather be lost than found:
We have forgotten where we are.
Shelter this candle. Shrewdly blowing
Down the cave from a secret door
Enters our only foe, the wind.
Hold it steady. Lest we stand,
Each in a sudden, separate dark,
The hot wax spattered upon your hand,
The smoking wick in my nostrils strong,
The inner eyelid red and green
For a moment yet with moons and roses,--
Then the unmitigated dark.
Alone, alone, in a terrible place,
In utter dark without a face,
With only the dripping of the water on the stone,
And the sound of your tears, and the taste of my own.
Happy New Year, Mrs. H! Hope it brings many blessings and much happiness for you and your husband! (And your family)
~Kristen