Fall Into Books

In June, I posted my summer reading Hit List, which, I'm pleased to say, I completed with one exception (I put aside temporarily Anne Lamott's Imperfect Birds). A number of books on my list were poetry collections. I've read all of them, several more than once — I can't say I'm "done" with them, however; poetry books are always beside me. I added several other poetry collections that I also recommend:Dawn Potter's How the Crimes Happened and Mark Doty's Fire to Fire. Of the other books I read, I urge you to find time for Anne Carson's Nox, Diane Ackerman's Dawn Light, Sara Maitland's A Book of Silence, and the extraordinary novel by Pascal Mercier, Night Train to Lisbon. 

Over the last several weeks, I've replenished my stacks. Here's what you'll find now on my reading tables (yes, I have more than one, plus the proverbial bed-side stand) for fall:

Nonfiction

✭ The Bomb, Howard Zinn (City Lights Books, 2010) ~ Completed a month before Zinn died, this book is a personal philosophical inquiry into moral and ethical issues of war.

✭ The Art of Description: Word Into Word, Mark Doty (Graywolf Press, 2010) ~ I was impelled to order this book on the craft of writing, part of the Art of series edited by Charles Baxter, after reading a quotation from it on a friend's blog. It does not disappoint.

Fiction

✭ Room: A Novel, Emma Donoghue (Little, Brown, 2010) ~ I'm seldom drawn to the overly hyped but friends' recommendations of this widely praised (short-listed for the 2010 Man Booker Prize), best-selling novel prompted an order. 

Here's a trailer for Room:

Memoir

✭ Mentor: A Memoir, Tom Grimes (Tin House Books, 2010)  ~ I've just finished this highly readable, insider's view of the famous Iowa Writers' Workshop. It's about more than that experience, however; it also draws a sensitive and telling portrait of the workshop's director, writer Frank Conroy, author of Stop-Time: A Memoir, published in 1967 and still in print. Conroy was a huge presence in Grimes' life.

Poetry

✭ The Least of These: Poems, Todd Davis (Michigan State University Press, 2009) ~ Peggy Rosenthal's Image Journal post about this collection caught my eye. Davis is, Rosenthal says, "in the tradition of Thoreau-Emerson-Dillard, but with his own special contemporary re-thinking of what Creation can be for a Christian." The collection is deeply compelling, and I plan to order Davis' other work.

✭ Letters From the Emily Dickinson Room, Kelli Russell Agodon (White Pine Press, 2010) ~ I recall first learning about Agodon's poetry from her friend, poet Susan Rich, whose blog The Alchemist's Kitchen I follow (Agodon's own blog, Book of Kells, I now follow, too). I've only just begun to dip into Letters but think I'm safe in saying, this is a wonderful collection. (To hear one of Agodon's poems, "Sometimes I still dream about their pink bodies", go here.)

✭ Harvesting Fog: Poems, Luci Shaw (Pinyon Publishing, 2010) ~ This is Shaw's 10th poetry collection and 30th book. Her "a fore word" to the collection might be reason enough to buy the book, so taken was I with her description of fog as hope-giving, "all those damp little particles waiting to be collected into water for cleansing, for thirst."

On my to-order list or awaiting delivery:

✭ Snow Day: A Novel, Billy Coffey (FaithWords, October 2010)

✭ In the Sanctuary of Women, Jan Richardson (Upper Room Books, October 2010)

✭ I Wonder, Marian Bantjes (The Monacelli Press, October 2010)

✭ Silver Roses: Poems, Rachel Wetzsteon (Persea, November 2010)

✭ Poetry in Person: Twenty-five Years of Conversations with America's Poets, Alexander Neubauer (Knopf, March 2010)

What are you reading this fall?