WHAT I'M READING V. 9

With me being back at work I haven't had as much time as I crave to read, but here are some of the books that I have my toes dipped in these days.


Attachments: Why You Love, Feel and Act the Way You Do, by Tim Clinton

There is a lot of revealing things in this book - self-revealing and also in that it sheds light on why people act the way they do in general. I'm about halfway through and I'm having to go slow because there is a lot to chew on here.

Letters to a Young Poet, by Rainer Maria Rilke

I came upon his poetry in college and instantly connected with it. I picked up this book shortly after that, and recently picked it up again to re-read. Here are some of the goods I've been cleaning from it this time around.

"You are so young; you stand before beginnings. I would like to beg of you, dear friend, as well as I can, to have patience with everything that remains unsolved in your heart. Try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books written in a foreign language. Do not now look for answers. They cannot now be given to you because you could not live them. It is a question of experiencing everything. At present you need to live the question. Perhaps you will gradually, without even noticing it, find yourself experiencing the answer, some distant day. Perhaps you are indeed carrying within yourself the potential to visualize, to design, and to create for yourself an utterly satisfying, joyful, and pure lifestyle."

The Faith of a Writer, by Joyce Carol Oates

Another book on writing! I especially love these where the writer shares how they got to where they are. 

H is for Hawk, by Helen Macdonald

After I had this recommended to me several times, I got sample of it and after a few pages, I was sold. The book is a memoir of her experience losing her father and how that leads her to raise a young goshawk, a type of hawk that is notoriously difficult to train. If you don't care too much about hawks, you might wonder how this book would be of interest to you. But it's written so well that you find yourself mesmerized by her descriptions of both the hawks and her grief.