those things with lots of pieces of paper bound together…

This is somewhat embarrassing.

I just counted the unread books in my room, like ones I own but have not yet picked up, and if I counted correctly, it’s about 57.

In my defense, I own many, many, many more books than that, so it’s not like I haven’t read anything. I just don’t read enough to keep up with my habit of buying books or with my habit of wanting to read books. I’m trying to catch up with classics that I never read, but I’m also trying to keep abreast of what’s going on in contemporary literature, both in YA (I try really hard to believe in the genre, though it’s hard, and I think calling it a genre is sort of stupid) and adult fiction. And then I also try to keep up with authors I like by reading more of their books, which is a sort of bad thing to do when you’re trying to read a lot of stuff. It sucks to find an author you like and can’t get enough of. :-p Then, the other thing I try and do is increase my exposure to different types of writing to work on my craft. So I need to read more short stories, because I’m terrible at those, and I like to read poetry, but it takes really long to finish just one book and feel like you’ve gotten anything significant out of it.

As if that number above isn’t bad enough, my to-read list (you can click on that link on the right that says “my bookshelf”) totals 182*. And it only gets higher every time I finish a book.

This semester burned me out so much, I can no longer remember how to just kick back with a book and read for a really long period of time. And I don’t remember how long it takes me to finish one. But I’m going to venture a guess, and I’m going to challenge myself to finish at least 30 books this summer. I have an abridged list taken from the 57 and the 182 of the ones most important to me to read now rather than later. This includes books that are being made into movies (Youth In Revolt), books by people I know and/or who have taught me in writing workshops (Not A Matter of Love, The Narrow Road Into the Interior), books that were gifts (La Hojarasca), classics/famous books (Oliver Twist, Balthazar, de Sade’s Justine), and books by Tucsonans (Sleeping With Schubert, History Lesson for Girls). So it’s a quite daunting task, but I’m excited. I will take books with me everywhere: to the science class I have to take starting on Monday, to Uruguay, to haircuts, to work, to the rec center, to my parents’ house. Reading has to be the main event for the summer, trumping friends and movies and mooning about boys who don’t like me back. It will even take precedence over writing, I think, just a little. There’s only so much honing of a craft you can do if you don’t read, and I am so, so behind in my reading. I’ve missed it so much.

I’ll take some book recommendations, if you have them, but please look and see if they’re already on my list, and only make them if they’re going to change my life. If you know me well, you know that very small, random things can change my life, but still. Recommendations with a grain of salt. And be advised that I may not be able to get to them for a long time, but they’ll go on my goodreads, and since the Internet never dies, I’ll never forget that I’m going to read them.

I’ll be blogging about my reading. And my travels. Please read. Or tell someone else to. I get lonely when I don’t feel encouraged. :-p

This starts now. Because as of about an hour and a half ago, this semester left my hands. Done. Time for grades.

*And then I remembered my Amazon wishlist, and I added all the books there to my to-read list as well. 200. Hooray!

there must be someplace here

I am my own worst enemy. I am that because I am my own worst student, which is the number one reason why I cannot be a teacher like everyone else in my family. Who am I to tell people what to do if I can’t tell it to myself? How do you tell yourself, “Do as I say and not as I do?”

I had this vague idea for a short story for awhile and then today during my lecture on recording contracts I began writing it. I’ve already revised a bit, I have a pretty clear picture of the world it takes place in, and I actually have a somewhat complete plot arc, when usually I rely on characters and a couple distinct scenes to get me writing and just hope for the best. I have a free night tonight and a nice, easy day tomorrow with my nice, easy new job, a fairly nice and easy Spanish essay to write, and hopefully nice and easy sight singing to learn for my singing test Thursday. It’s a night for writing, and it’s been so long since I’ve been stress-free(-ish), headache-free, and health problem-free. I have candles lit and two of them smell delicious, I have my late night writing playlist, “eine kleine nachtmusik,” going through my fake vintage radio that is actually an iPod dock, and I’m ready to go. I want to be writing. I am writing.

But I’ve lost the thing in me that used to make me write for hours on end. And I’ve gained something new since I was 12. This Mac has the Internet. I have stuff I want to say. Right now, as I write this, I’ve run out of the bloggy inspiration I had for a moment and I want to go back to the story, where the next line of dialogue has been running through my head for at least five minutes. But I feel absolutely compelled to waste time, procrastinate, and not create. I’ve become a writer who doesn’t like writing. Or something. I hate my generation. I hate multi-tasking and lack of an attention span.

But this story. I think it may be a good one.

I’m going to go write that line of dialogue, and then I’m going to waste more time updating the playlist section, since I didn’t have a March one at all. Fail. Then maybe I’ll get back to doing that thing I always talk about doing.