The Writing Life

I read a lot of blogs. Ones that feed my hobbies (backpacker magazine, backcountry.com: the goat), my obsession with food (grub street, eater), my work (awful library books, and ok, Points of Reference and The Guardian's Books blog), miscellaneous crap (hipster puppies, the "blog" of "unnecessary" quotation marks, awkward family photos), and of course, the blogs of the Library's wonderful member writers. In addition to all this blog reading, I have the usual obsession with the ever expanding pile of books on my nightstand compounded by the fact that I troll through the Library's stacks every day. My role as an aquisitions librarian also presents a hazard as my compulsory reading of book reviews is often followed by a manic compulsion to add more books to my own Goodreads list.


I nervously read through lists of books that I "must read now!", I should have read, best of, worst of, and everything that everybody else is reading. And today's must reads came in the form of member writer Alison Pace's blog post about what's on her reading pile. And that's where I discovered Annie Dillard's The Writing Life.

The Writing Life! How did I not know about this? I admit, it's not the most unique name for our member writer programming here at the Library, but I was not familiar with Annie Dillard's book. So, thanks Allison for adding yet another book to my pile. For along with everything else on my list are books to help this Writer Services Librarian understand that mysterious class of people known as writers.

So, I shall eventually get to The Writing Life, the book, after I read John McNally's fictional account of the Iowa Writer's Workshop, "After the Workshop", and the hundred other books on my ever expanding list.

So come on. Pile on. Let me know what else I should be reading blog-wise and book-wise.