Book Photo Challenge: Part 3

During the month of August, I've been (poorly) trying to keep up with this photo challenge through Tumblr and Instagram.  I'm cheating a little bit with this round of photos because not all the information is being presented in photos--I don't have a picture of the book I wanted to include for my Book Recommendation, and I felt my Favorite Blogs would be most easily presented just as text.  Anyway, I hope my numbering system isn't too confusing and I'm looking forward to collecting another week of pictures!

17 // A Book Set in Your State or Town - I'm proud to call the setting of Diablo Cody's memoir Candy Girl, Minneapolis, Minnesota, my hometown.
18 // Favorite Ending - Life of Pi author Yann Martel's novel Beatrice and Virgil is crazy.  Most of the book moves pretty slowly, and while I was reading I almost put it down a dozen times because the lack of action just seemed so pointless.  But that's because it's just all building up toward the most insane, shocking, and powerful ending I've ever read.
19 // Funniest Character - Georgia Nicholson from The Confessions of Georgia Nicholson series!  This series by Louise Rennison is told through diary entries by a teenage girl living in England, and begins with the book Angus, Thongs, and Full-Frontal Snogging.
20 // Book Recommendation - Okay, one of my favorite books to recommend is Zeitoun by Dave Eggers.  This is a true story of what happened to a Muslim-American family living in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina, and it really introduced me to the terrifying results prejudice can lead to in the United States.
21 // Longest Book - I've read some pretty long children's and young adult books, such as the Deathly Hallows, but because those books are such easy reads they hardly seem to count.  The Gravedigger's Daughter by Joyce Carol Oates was 582 pages long and took over a month to read, but I love Oates' writing style which made it all worth it.
22 // Bookstack - A few days ago, a secondhand store down the street from me was having a 50% off sale with paperbacks for only 25 cents, and I was excited to actually find some books I've been meaning to read for a while.  I love digging through used books and trying to find the best deals--in fact, I hardly ever buy books full price anymore.
23 // Fictional BF/GF - I've always had a tiny crush on the husband from The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger.  He works at a library, has great taste in music and art, and has the perfect amount of tutored soul.  Need I say more?
24 // Favorite Blogs - I read blogs in every category, but a few of my favorite writing/book blogs include Dead White Guys, Hazel & Wren, and Wise, Ink.

Parts 1 and 2 of my Book Photo Challenge can be found here and here.

Happy end-of-summer!
Elizabeth

Currently Reading: Memoirs

My dream has always been to write fiction, and for years I was adamant about my refusal to read nonfiction for fun (picture: pretentious teenage Elizabeth claiming "Oh, I only read fiction.")  Obviously, this was really stupid, and over the past several months, creative nonfiction, personal essays and memoirs in particular, have been some of my favorite genres to both read and write.

I am 100% a product of the 21st century, so when my internet spontaneously stopped working a few nights ago, I panicked trying to figure out how I would entertain myself.  Obviously, I headed straight to the bookstore in search of something mindless and fun to read during these dark times, and came back with Diablo Cody's memoir, Candy Girl.  This book is fantastic, and inspired me to write about a few of my other favorite memoirs.

Candy Girl by Diablo Cody - I have been a fan of the famous stripper-turned-screenwriter ever since the release of Juno, so I knew her writing would be clever, unique, fast-paced, and very very funny.  This book chronicles the year Cody spent working as a stripper in Minneapolis, and in addition to the fascinating behind-the-scenes look at these establishments, as someone who grew up in Minneapolis, I was infinitely entertained by trying to count how many strip club names I recognized from driving past them on the way to my summer creative writing classes.  Not to mention her descriptions of Minnesota, such as, "Minnesota is like a church basement with a leaky popcorn ceiling and a bingo caller who's afraid to amp things up past a whisper" are spot-on.

On Writing by Stephen King - This book is half-memoir, half-how-to-write, and strikes a perfect balance between the two.  King gives an intimate insight into several personal details of his life, including his experiences writing for small publications as a teenager to his terrifying drug and alcohol addiction.  He counters this with step-by-step descriptions of the writing process and advice on everything from vocabulary to the publishing industry, while always maintaining a conversational tone that is easy to read, and never comes across as textbook.

A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers - This fictionalized memoir is Dave Eggers' first book, and though Eggers writes both fiction and nonfiction with success in both genres, his memoir seems to receive the most praise.  At age 22, Eggers moved from Chicago to California following the deaths of his parents to raise his 8-year-old brother, and he recounts this time in his memoir through not only stories, but lists, fictionalized interviews, and charts.  It's sad, and funny, and creative, and takes crazy risks in its writing but succeeds immensely.  The personalized writing advice I received from Eggers at a signing when I told him I wanted to be a writer definitely only added to my love of this book.

Just Kids by Patti Smith - I read Patti Smith's memoir about living as a starving artist in New York in the late sixties and early seventies before really knowing anything about her music or career, and fell in love with it so much that I quickly developed an unhealthy obsession with her music and art.  (I even skipped my poetry night class one night to see her in concert, using my grocery money to buy the ticket, which is so Patti Smith in and of itself that I can't even handle it.)  This novel is beautifully written and illustrates perfectly and honestly what it means to be an artist.  I love this book because it allows those of us who have dreamed of the starving artist lifestyle to live vicariously through Patti Smith's.  I'm not exaggerating when I say is one of my all-time favorite books.

Read on,
Elizabeth