I don’t read the works of others during the time I am heavily into writing. It’s a habit I’ve developed over the years and I am not sure why, or even that it needs to make sense. Maybe it’s as simple as I don’t multitask easily. A second part is that I write, revise, revise, revise, etc., so I’m a slow writer. I do this with both short and longer pieces. For this reason, good books are on the shelves for years before I get around to reading them. Then I like knowing there’s always a good book waiting. I read some books multiple times. Conversations with Dorothy Allison is one that I go back to again and again, as a way of settling the unsettling nature of writing.
What I’ve Read: 2013-2014
- The History of Vegas, Jodi Angel
- Blasphemy, Sherman Alexie
- The Girls Club, Sally Bellerose
- Madhouse Fog, Sean Carswell
- A Land More Kind Than Home, Wiley Cash
- Conversations with Dorothy Allison, Mae Miller Claxton, Editor
- The Power of Habit, Charles Duhigg
- Round House, Louise Erdrich
- Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk, Ben Fountain
- Hell at the Breech, Tom Franklin
- Crooked Letter, Crooked Letter, Tom Franklin
- The Body Language Advantage, Lillian Glass
- Death of the Liberal Class, Chris Hedges
- In the River Sweet, Patricia Henley
- The Snow Child, Eowyn Ivey
- Corpus Christi, Bret Anthony Johnston
- Naming the World, Bret Anthony Johnston
- What Work Is, Phillip Levine
- Red Audrey and the Roping, Jill Malone
- The Dry Grass of August, Anna Jean Mayhew
- Home, Toni Morrison
- Dead Man Walking, Sister Helen Prejean
- The Cove, Ron Rash
- The World Made Straight, Ron Rash
- Brothers: The Hidden History of the Kennedy Years, David Talbot
- We The Animals, Justin Torres
- All the King’s Men, Robert Penn Warren
- Salvage the Bones, Jesmyn West
- The Maid’s Version, Daniel Woodrell
- Winter’s Bone, Daniel Woodrell
