Reading, Lately

Remember summer reading lists from school? I wasn’t all that interested in them as a student. (Too busy playing volleyball, I guess.) But this year I put together a reading list for myself, and it’s been fun to keep track of my progress. I’ve been reading novels, mostly. Two paperbacks and two new hardbacks. Only one food-related book, because I’m getting ready for all the big cookbook releases coming this fall. Benjamin Dreyer’s utterly correct guide to clarity and style, plus a couple of books that I loaned out so they aren’t pictured here: Maybe You Should Talk to Someone and Inheritance—both terrific. A book of arrestingly beautiful essays by Mary Oliver. I’ve underlined many passages, but I keep coming back to this one:

“It is six A.M., and I am working. I am absentminded, reckless, heedless of social obligations, etc. It is as it must be. The tire goes flat, the tooth falls out, there will be a hundred meals without mustard. The poem gets written. I have wrestled with the angel and I am stained with light and I have no shame. Neither do I have guilt.”