NEW POETRY, FAVORITE BOOKS: The winter edition of Blue Fifth Review is available to read online. I'm thrilled to have three poems in this issue and share the pages with Barbara Jane Reyes, Marge Piercy, Jeannine Hall Gailey (who reviews A Slice of Cherry Pie, the anthology of Twin Peaks-inspired poems), Christine Hamm, Arlene Ang and many other wonderful poets, writers and artists. This edition has a cinema theme, and my poems reference Wim Wenders' Paris, Texas and Aliens. There's also a tribute to the late Solveig Dommartin called "From Her To Eternity." Many thanks to editor Sam Rasnake for selecting my work and braving computer problems to get this issue published.Poet With A Day Job tagged me to list 35 books I've read, enjoyed and would recommend. Thirty-five? Who picked that randomness? Anyway, this is also a great way to mention a site that Anne Haines turned me onto, LibraryThing.com. You can create an online catalogue of your library, share it with others (or not) and the list is even available on your cell phone if you're in a bookstore and can't remember if you own a certain book. How cool is that? I've started creating my virtual bookshelf at the site and you can see some of the titles here. I've also created a permanent "widget" for the blog, which you can see at left under the links. Anyway, here's my list in no particular order:
1. Underworld - Don Delillo
2. Written on the Body - Jeanette Winterson
3. A Widow for One Year - John Irving
4. Other Voices, Other Rooms - Truman Capote
5. Cat's Eye - Margaret Atwood
6. You'll Never Eat Lunch In This Town Again - Julia Phillips
7. Silence of the Lambs - Thomas Harris
8. The Hours - Michael Cunningham
9. The Powerbook - Jeanette Winterson
10. Beloved - Toni Morrison
11. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
12. And the Band Played On - Randy Shilts
13. Possession - A.S. Byatt
14. Ulysses - James Joyce
15. Leaves of Grass - Walt Whitman
16. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
17. Their Eyes Were Watching God - Zora Neale Hurston
18. The English Patient - Michael Ondaatje
19. Damage - Josephine Hart
20. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
21. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
22. To Kill A Mockingbird - Harper Lee
23. A Good Man Is Hard to Find - Flannery O'Connor
24. Prince of Tides - Pat Conroy
25. Paradise - Toni Morrison
26. The House of the Spirits - Isabele Allende
27. Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - John Berendt
28. Run With the Horsemen - Ferrol Sams
29. Ghostwritten - David Mitchell
30. The Dead and The Living - Sharon Olds
31. Morning in the Burned House - Margaret Atwood
32. The Complete Poems - Anne Sexton
33. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
34. Orlando - Virginia Woolf
35. On Beauty - Zadie Smith
Comments
Thanks for playing! My L has a Library Thing!
and geez, "The Bluest Eye", by the unbelieveably talented Toni Morrison definitely...
Love your Capote and Allende choices, too...
And hey--wasn't Dr. Sams YOUR doctor, for real??
I ache with the news of Solveig's death--I somehow missed that obituary.She was so wise in Wings, an all-time favorite.
~sigh~
Brilliant poems, Collin.
~kg
I really enjoyed your piece "After Adultery" in BFR.
-Rach
Paul loves Winteson, so that stuck out to me.
-D.
library thing -- totally wild!
Awesome book list! I found many of my favorites among your list. I had no idea you liked Jane Eyre - you have excellent literary tastes, and I'm in no way biased ;)
Loved the English patient also and the movie is a must see. Ulysses is one of those books you are supposed to read, if you are a true reader, but I could not get through it. That is pretty bad, I know. I will have to try again. Also just bought the Hours in a used book sale (I haunt those places like crazy), and will be reading it on my spring break.
Will be checking out LibraryThing soon. Thanks for the heads up.