My reading-for-writers group met earlier this week and made our selections for the next year (one book per month starting in July). I am excited by the breadth of the list , which was purposeful — we wanted to expand our reading to include all kinds of genres thinking, why not? why not mix it up?
It will be an interesting reading & thinking year, and I thought some of Stoney Moss’s pals might like to see our selections. The book is followed by a general craft question, which the presenter will follow up on with more, while we are reading.
Wintering by Kate Moses
Craft Question: How can historical fiction integrate work by the subject (in this case Sylvia Plath’s poetry) successfully?
When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit by Judith Kerr
Craft Question: What makes for successful YA lit, and what craft questions are these authors engaging with?
Out Stealing Horses by Per Petterson
Craft Question: How do you sustain a “prose poetry” quality in a novel-length work?
Let Us Now Praise Famous Men by James Agee and Walker Evans
Craft Question: How can nonfiction collaborate with other art forms (in this case a marriage between essay and photography)?
When a Crocodile Eats the Sun by Peter Godwin
Craft Question: How much “true family history” is it fair for an author to appropriate in memoir?
Science Fiction Shorts (TBD)
Craft Question: What interesting new formats are being used in sci-fi genre fiction?
Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov
Craft Question: How does Nabokov pull it off?!
Tinkers by Paul Harding
Craft Question: How does a short novel achieve so much in so little space?
Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood
Craft Question: How can true crime be translated into good fiction?
Essays from Best American Science Writing 2008 (TBD)
Craft Question: How are science essayists extending/enhancing the form?
Blue Latitudes by Tony Horowitz
Craft Question: How does someone pull off history, travel, adventure, current-events and memoir in one book?
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout
Craft Question: What makes a successful collection of linked stories? Is it a novel?
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Have you read any of these? Would you agree they are list-worthy? Why?
No related posts.
i really like this list. in fact, i’m seduced enough to read a few myself. beginning with “wintering,” actually.
i’m also very curious about the craft question related to “out stealing horses” — how to sustain the prose poem thing in a much longer work. i always thought if i ever wrote novel/memoir, i would use hybrid sort of writing. i hope you’ll share some of the discussions and observations you all have as you go along.
you know, because not all of us have such a cool reading group!
I do feel fortunate to have this group. As in damn lucky.
I always mean to post my post-group-thoughts, but I will certainly — at least on these two — now. I am intrigued by these books the very most, too, although “my” selection is for science writing.