BookStack

The Pleasure of the Text

In his beautiful description of reading, The Pleasure of the Text, Roland Barthes writes: "The text produces, in me, the best pleasure if it manages to make itself heard indirectly; if, reading it, I am led to look up often, to listen to something else."

Week Five - Assignments

After a tough month of travel and discombobulation, we're back to The Project.

Tonight, I chose Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird for John (after all, I wrote it and it's about time he read it, don't you think? ;-) and I chose Ron Clark's The Essential 55 for Emma.

First line of Bird by Bird: "The very first thing I tell my new students on the first day of a workshop is that good writing is about telling the truth."

First line of The Essential 55:  Rule 1: When responding to any adult, you must answer by saying 'Yes ma'am' or 'No sir.' Just nodding your head or saying any other form of yes or no is not acceptable."

I'm choosing my own book this week:  The Soft Vengeance of a Freedom Fighter by Albie Sachs, a re-read, a must-read, go. read. it.

Week Four - Assignments

Wow.

Carson McCullers was just 28 years old when she wrote this book.

Now I'm depressed, having not written such a book at such a tender age. Or perhaps not, since her life was so troubled; the deep insight into the human condition so clear in her novels didn't seep into her own living, it seems.

Read it.