As has always been my way, when I’m focused, I’m focused.  So you’ll be hearing much about literature this summer here at Spinning, and in the reading and writing of it.  Even moving out the piece I’m working on will not prevent me totally, I am sure, from updates here now and then when something exciting happens.  Just as with the reading of Parker and McCarthy, and soon, Still Life, which will all be recorded here.

Neha got me thinking about re-reading Salinger’s "Catcher In The Rye," and I wandered over to the "finished" bookshelves and pulled it out to add to my "to be read" queue (goodness, I had an extra Q in queue!) marching like soldiers to be battled with down the hearth.

But while I was there, I looked over some of what I have stored there, picking out these long-ago goodies:  Tobacco Road, The Silmarillion, Grapes of Wrath, Wuthering Heights, The Mysterious Island, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.

I wondered, then remembered, why I don’t have DuMaurier’s Rebecca; in freshman year English, Mrs. Baltay started out the year with a box full of paperbacks.  We each picked one, read through it, returned it and picked another.  Rebecca was my first selection.  At the end of the year, we each got to pick one to keep.  It was a hard choice, but Wuthering Heights won out.

There are many, many more on the shelves, and I have given hundreds away.  But The Borzoi Poe is there, a two-book set that I spent $30 on way back when that was a lot of money.  I have Frank Hebert’s "Dune" series, though I don’t remember reading them.  About twenty-plus of Stephen King, a few Best Of’s such as H. G. Wells and Bradbury, along with many fantasy, mystery, archery, bios, gardening, psychic and psychological books, and yes of course, The Joy of Sex.

Quite a collection.  But so many are missing that I’ve read and don’t have a copy of.  Hmmm.  Some, I know, were borrowed and returned.  Don’t normally loan out the special books, and don’t even write my name inside them.  The last book I loaned out several months ago was ""Blood Meridian" and since I don’t think I’ll ever see it again, have already bought another copy. 

It’s a personality flaw, I suppose; the need to own or hold onto something that made a difference in my life.  But at least I will not brand it by writing in my name.

Here I am, pining away for poetry and via Languagehat I’m directed to Poets.org (which I forget to check in on since they’re not on my Bloglines listing) and their "31 Groundbreaking Works". 

Good grief.  Looks to me like I may be adding to my reading list.  Some good stuff here, obviously, and what I may instead try to do is spend some library time instead of money in reading up on these pieces and their authors. 

I realize that these are not what sells these days, but then, I’m not interested in selling poetry, just writing it.  And too, more for practice in the manipulation of language that eventually will show up in short story form.  But starting from the old to learn the new is one of my methods, and this listing appears to have a diverse group included.  I also will shortly be into the first of many, many lit journals I need to catch up on, and they’re loaded with contemporary works. 

Read, read, read.  Write, write, write.  I’ll get the hang of this yet.