Last month, I started a “reading diet.” The idea comes from Ray Bradbury who recommended that the aspiring read one short story, one poem, and one essay every day, and one novel per week.
I’m reckoning with something I wish I had known a long time ago, that reading is part of your workday as a writer. It’s not laziness or procrastination, it’s not passive, and it’s not optional. You can read more about my first two weeks of this experiment here.
This is what I read in the second half of March.
What I’m reading
Stories from:
- The First 49 – Ernest Hemingway
- Break it Down – Lydia Davis
- The Greek Myths —Robert Graves
Essays & Non-Fiction:
- Meditations —Marcus Aurelius
- Ryan Holiday on why you shouldn’t move to NYC and why LA is “criminally underrated.” Also his thoughts on how to travel.
- “Heroin/e” –Cheryl Strayed
- Jim Harrison’s “Guide to Eating Vividly” from his posthumous A Really Big Lunch: Meditations on Food and Life by a Roving Gourmand.
- Ego is the Enemy —Ryan Holiday
- The Obstacle is the Way —Ryan Holiday
- The Well Fed Writer — Peter Bowerman
Poems From:
- Hawk in the Rain — Ted Hughes
Novels:
- I started Proust’s Swann’s Way but swapped it out for John Kennedy Toole’s A Confederacy of Dunces after about 20 pages. The former is much harder to read without the snotty English major zeal I had the first time around.