Since I shut down my Goodreads account, I plan to post more book reviews and bookish thoughts here. This doesn’t mean the blog will morph into a reading blog, but as I’m experiencing a bit of a creative impasse at the moment, there may be more book talk in the near future than anything else. Curiously, even when I’m in a fallow creative writing period I find it possible to write about books. I think this is related to the schismatic phenomenon between reading and writing (creative writing, that is), so that during times of heavy reading one cannot write, and during times of heavy writing, one cannot read. Thomas Bernhard spoke of this (I will have to dig up the quote, as it is typically extreme, and hence, amusing), as have other writers. So, rather than let this blog languish during those times, which is what has occurred in the past, I will endeavor to post about books and writers.
There are a few books I originally wrote reviews of on Goodreads that I will be highlighting, interspersed with whatever books of significance to me that I have recently completed.
Stay tuned for an upcoming post on the elusive Gil Orlovitz.
And in the meantime enjoy this song by Caudal…it’s soothing in a rhythmic, hypnotic way.
Edit: Found the Bernhard quote. It’s from his memoir Gathering Evidence.
“When I am writing I read nothing, and when I am reading I write nothing. For long periods I read and write nothing, finding both equally repugnant.”
awildslimalien
/ May 17, 2014Hope you find your way out of the impasse before long. Even if you can’t write while reading heavily, I’ve found that the reading eventually tells, either by sparking your brain into creative life, or by making you sufficiently jealous of that sparking effect on yourself that you simply have to try again to elicit it in other readers.
I enjoyed the Caudal track. It reminded me of Australian jazz trio the Necks; you might like them.
birds fly
/ May 18, 2014Thanks, and agreed about the cause-effect relationship.
Glad you enjoyed Caudal. I will have to check out the Necks. The name sounds promising…