life done write

I’ve decided (mostly because I am boring and have little else to say at the moment) that it is time for another update on the ever-fabulous booklist. Last we left off, it was May 29th and I had dabbled in the worlds of unhappy elephants, psychic divorcees and lonely twenty-something men (oh wait, that last world I dabble in on a rather monthly basis, don’t I? Hmm). I’m happy to say that I’ve added to that list singing midgets, Indian prostitutes, angry blue genies and amazing exploding senators. Piqued your interest? Without further ado, then…

Books I liked
My Fair Lazy (not as good as Bitter is the New Black, but still Jen is talented)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
Half the Sky

Nerd-a-liciousness
Content Strategy for the Web

Just fine…not fantastic
The Art of Racing in the Rain
Veronika Decides to Die

Books that lost me
Arabian Nights
Boomsday

The summer has, as predicted, slowed my reading regime a little. But not for long, as I’m about to have about a hundred hours of travel time next month. And you know that means about 95 hours of reading in between five hours of sleep. Bliss.

I guess I should give you a belated update on last week’s Read Good Books and Learn New Things, yes?

First off, I read approximately one and a half books, so don’t get too excited about the long list of Amazing Literature that I’m now offering up. Do get excited about the fact that both books fall into the amazing category:

Bitter is the New Black by Jen Lancaster is charming, witty and the best kind of self deprecating. It’s inspired me 60 more pages into my own book, which may explain why I’m only halfway through Bitter right now. I just can’t read a chapter without writing.

Content Strategy (Kristina Halvorson’s book) was helpful, clear and so very well laid out. For the massive content strategy project I’ve got in the works right now, it was just what the doctor ordered. And, of course, it just so happens that it fulfills that second requirement of my week: Learn New Things.

So, things I learned:

1. Content strategy: what it looks like, what it might include, how to think about it.
2. Writing: how far I feel is appropriate to stretch the limits of non-fiction in order to keep a story moving.
3. Food: tequila lime salsa from Whole Foods tastes awful.
4. Myself: according to my journals, I was such a lame whiner in college.
5. Work: being the emergency website outage line at work = some very creepy phone calls.

Week five is a combination of Read Good Books and Learn New Things. Two things I think I can accomplish both together and separately.

Things I plan on doing in order to keep these resolutions:
1. Choose books that I’m looking forward to (not just books people have recommended and I’m therefore going to read, etc.). I plan on starting with Bitter is the New Black (which I actually started 2 days early, as I was done with A Very Lonely Planet).

2. Also choose books that I think I can learn something from. After Bitter is the New Black, I may start in on Content Strategy by Kristina Halvorson, which I successfully convinced my Creative Director to purchase for our Content Department (aka. mua). I’ve also got Jewish Literacy, which is an enormous history, tradition, religion, etc. book that I’ve started before (and loved), but never finished. Mostly because it’s too big to carry with me.

3. I’ve been wanting to go to a Jewish Temple service for a while now: this may just be the right time.

4. I’m definitely NOT going to keep reading anything I find boring, trite or tedious. I frequently keep reading those kinds of books in order to “give them a chance.” But not this week. And I think this year in general I’m done with that strategy. Life is too short for bad books.

I’ll start by saying that I purged my booklist significantly. After starting my experiment in self improvement, one of the things that stood out to me is this: I read books I don’t like. Or I add books to my list that I know I won’t like. No more, though. I got rid of a bunch of family stories in American settings. I know lots of people like them, but I don’t. You’ll also notice that I added on a number of other non-fiction books and a children’s book or two–so the list didn’t actually get shorter.

Anyhow, onto the ones I actually read–or mostly read.

Books I loved:
Bitter is the New Black (Okay, okay, so I’m only partway through this one. But I love it so far. It’s a memoir that reads like a novel. Well done, Jennifer Whats-Your-Name)

Books I liked:
Now You See Her
A Very Lonely Planet
Cracked

Books that were tedious:
The Shadow of the Wind
On Writing

Books that put me to sleep:
Ending Slavery

I also re-read the first and second Harry Potter books, in keeping with my resolutions to re-read books and do what I love.

I asked a book rep once, since he sees so many published books, what he thought the characteristic of a publishable book was. He said “good writing,” which I thought was a cop out and categorically untrue (just read The Di Vinci Code or Marley and Me and you’ll see that writing capability has approximately 0 to do with it).

What I think he meant to say was “a good story.” Because that part seems to be true. The Di Vinci Code certainly is a riveting and brilliant plot line that caused all sorts of conspiracy theories, panics and so forth. Marley and Me too–good story.

Luckily for all of you, the book pictured above (Water for Elephants) has both: good story (I was riveted, finding ways to stay awake longer in order to read it) and great writing. It just made the Required Reading List.