Survival Supplies – Seasonal Semester

 

The way I go about selecting what I “need” to be reading ends up functioning by the time the list competes its way out to also be a “Recommended Reading” list, as if the titles that capture my attention withstand engagement and require careful full attention clearly I’ve decided (for me) that these books are worth adding to my internal world.  So the purpose of periodically posting the books I spend time in each week (usually for a few months), is both a bibliography to the thought that comes out in my writings, as well as an “I think these books are worth anyone’s time” should you share some of my interests.  That being said, it is August, and I’m in a full week of graduate school (full-time) after over 15 years of private personal schooling within my home and 16 years of marriages, parenting and retail employment.  Reentry is daunting, particularly as technologies of education have changed radically, so all my moments are being rearranged and reallotted, but I need books and literary languages for so many things in my life (indeed, for quality of life itself), that my body demands I make moments for all it craves throughout every process.  The following is what lines my desk as “essential” as I enter this Fall semester (many are repeats – not quite finished from the busy Summer):

This time, from left to right around the perimeter:

Christoph Niemann: Abstract City

Jonathan Safran Foer: Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

Michael Chorost: World Wide Mind: The Coming Integration of Humanity, Machines, and the     Internet

Gerald Edelman: second nature: brain science and human knowledge

Antonio Damasio: Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain

Norman Doidge: The Brain that Changes Itself

Mengert & Wilkinson, eds.: 12×12: Conversations in 21^st Century Poetry and Poetics

Michael Holquist: Dialogism: Bakhtin and His World

Michael Chabon: Manhood for Amateurs

Viktor Shklovsky: Bowstring: On the Dissimilarity of the Similar

Lyn Hejinian: The Language of Inquiry

Octavio Paz: Convergences: Essays on Art & Literature

Ronald Sukenick: narralogues

 

Fiction:

Ben Marcus: The Flame Alphabet

Lance Olsen: Girl Imagined by Chance

G. Gospodinov: And Other Stories

John Gardner: The Wreckage of Agathon

Lynne Tillman: This is Not It

David Foster Wallace: The Pale King

 

Poetry:

Wallace Stevens: Opus Posthumous

William Bronk: Life Supports

Larry Levis: The Selected Levis

William Stafford: The Way It Is

Edmond Jabes: From the Book to the Book

Arkadii Dragomoschenko: Xenia

Rosmarie Waldrop: Curves to the Apple

 

Miscellaneous:
Edward Sapir: Language

J.R. Firth: Speech

Ann Smock: What is There to Say?

V.N. Volosinov: Marxism and the Philosophy of Language

H.L. Hix: Spirits Hovering Over the Ashes

M.M. Bakhtin: The Dialogic Imagination

Maurice Blanchot: The Infinite Conversation

Richard Rubin: Foundations of Library and Information Science

Cassell / Hiremath: Reference and Information Services in the 21^st Century

Carol Kuhlthau: Seeking Meaning: A Process Approach to Library & Information Services