it's day 38 of my book challenge, and as of 11 pm on friday evening, i was right on track, finishing annie dillard's The Writing Life, my eighth book this year.
i have always admired annie dillard's writing. her prose is some of the most breathtakingly beautiful i have ever read. and this little book about her life and habits as a writer is absolutely no exception.
here are some excerpts to let you judge for yourself...
how we spend our days is , of course, how we spend our lives. what we do with this hour, and that one, is what we are doing... there is no shortage of days. it is good lives that are hard to come by. {p. 32}
write as if you were dying. at the same time assume you write for an audience consisting solely of terminal patients. {p. 68}
only after the writer lets literature shape her can she perhaps shape literature. {p. 69}upon finishing her book i am left with a strange wondering if one could ever be a writer of annie's calibre while living in a city without the luxury of a rustic and unheated cabin to guide you through the words. still, while her basic ideas are much the same as other writers on the subject of writing, she just says it all so much more beautifully! if you are a writer, you must read this book.
on to the next...
book number nine should be finished by tomorrow {which is also right on time}, although at this point, i am not sure which one it will be. i am reading three right now, Winnie the Pooh, a Cara Black mystery, Murder in Montmartre, and Cupidity. i am also toying with the idea of starting Jane Austen's Persuasion, as i saw the BBC version of it over the holidays and it was pure bliss. it's anyone's guess as to which one will win...
what are you reading?
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