I had this idea to choose twenty books I was thankful for as an homage to one of my favorite holidays, Thanksgiving. But then I realized I couldn’t choose only twenty, or decide which to include. So welcome to my multi-part series, Books I’m Grateful For, with today’s installment: novels. (Still to come: poetry! And more.)
Happy Thanksgiving, readers. I’m thankful for so much this year, and I hope you are, too.
Twenty Novels I’m Grateful For:
1. To the Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf
2. The Longest Journey, E.M. Forster
3. The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
4. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
5. The History of Love, Nicole Krauss
6. Invisible Man, Ralph Ellison
7. Room, Emma Donoghue
8. The White Bone, Barbara Gowdy
9. Spartina, John Casey
10. The Color Purple, Alice Walker
11. The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri
Thank you google images
12. State of Wonder, Ann Patchett
13. Out Stealing Horses, Per Petterson
14. The Road, Cormac McCarthy
15. Possession, A.S. Byatt
16. Disgrace, JM Coetzee
17. Another Country, James Baldwin
18. American Pastoral, Philip Roth
19. My Antonia, Willa Cather
20. The Virgin Suicides, Jeffrey Eugenides
I could go on, and on, and on…but I will stop there.
B just told me over a pot of pear-cinnamon jam that he’s getting tired of the plugs. I admit that my posts have been plug-heavy of late, but that’s what you get when you cross three classes with six hours in the writing lab plus two random freelance gigs that come in just as your mother-in-law and your mom are both coming to visit. Plugs are quick and easy, truth be told, especially during this very busy fall I’ve been having.
So, whaddya think? Enjoying my every-Monday pings for books and films and lectures I’m interested in promoting, or should my plugs just come up when exciting stuff is happening?
As it happens, I have no plug for today, other than to say: get thyself a writing group. It’s the best. And spend some good time with your family or your friends this week. We’re making Christmas presents (pear-cinnamon jam, anyone?) and I’m looking forward to Thanksgiving.
Here is a fall poem for today.
STEPS TO GET OVER
Again yesterday the wind rose & shook the leaves off
The trees throw shadows on the sidewalk
We trudge along avoiding each other
Because sometimes everyone is the enemy even
The guy in the trench coat & black hat lingers over the box
Where they keep the free newspapers taking one out
At the ballpark a baseball took off through
The stratosphere was pierced by a comet with rough edges
And a whole series of constellations you didn?t know
How sharp I was I just got your letter & photograph
Thank you I treasure it as an artifact of the love that never
Was I too effusive or too
Odd how the baseball takes its arc from the moon
If the moon were a motion it would be whoosh
Go the leaves on the sidewalk in a sudden brief gust
That leaves us all
Breathless is how I felt when I got your letter
And tucked it into the drawer alongside other things
Aren?t so good here since you last
Wrote memory is a funny thing because it makes us
Crazy people in the crosswalk & a marching band on the town hall steps
To get over you are too numerous to mention here
Come the cheerleaders who arrived with the marching band & will leave
On the shoulders of a hundred football players
Are birds of paradise whispering play
Secrets are not fun for the person who doesn?t notice
The sidewalk dappled with leaf-shaped light
A cigarette in winter & it?s a tiny planet in your fingers
(? Susie Meserve. First published in Cimarron Review, winter 2007.)
About Me
I'm working from the premise that motherhood is not just all diapers, tantrums, and setting limits. It's interesting. Okay, sometimes.
4. Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen
I'm working from the premise that motherhood is not just all diapers, tantrums, and setting limits. It's interesting. Okay, sometimes. 