200

Whose woods these are I think I know.

A few weeks ago, I reached two hundred books read on Goodreads, and, as of this blog’s gestation, I have loved and frowned at, devoured and savored, fought with and inhabited two hundred and nine tomes. My wingspan has cast fuzzy shadows over poetry collections and novels and some nonfiction pieces that have built me up as an aspiring cognitive scientist. Some books have surprised me; others were exactly as I expected them to be.

For a long time, I have been in a deep slumber that one might casually brand a “reading slump.” I think that I have sloughed that slumber off, for all I want to do is down book after book. But I also have graduate school responsibilities and final revisions to apply to my dear Canis Major, so I am doing a wobbling balancing act to fulfill my responsibilities and slake my literary thirsts by setting myself a daily goal: Read two hundred pages.

—

His house is in the village though.

I am moving slowly, crawling, inching through Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s Americanah. The writing is what I have always aspired to for my own prose, something strong and graceful at the same time. All the people who have told me that it is a masterpiece were correct.

I always look at the page count of a good book, not because I want to gobble it up and greedily, smugly look back at the pages that have past, but because I am in awe of how a story is paced. Like cement blocks, the paragraphs squat on the foundation of the story itself and anchor me as a reader — time is passing, but the story is bolted so securely that one does not feel it.

—

He will not see me stopping here

I am tinkering with the poetry that these fiction pieces are inspiring, and I predict that reading two hundred pages per day will engender my own work. At the moment, I have two novels, two novellas, two short stories, and three poems in progress. Call me greedy, but I dream of a life for myself as a professional writer. I want to hold my book-child in my hands and caress its cover, cup its spine like it is a soft cheek.

Is that arrogance that leaves me daydreaming about seeing my own book, perhaps Canis Major sitting on a bookshelf in a shop? Is that shallowness that lingers on book awards lists, fantasizing about Project Novocaine fetching a fine prize? Perhaps. Probably.

—

To watch his woods fill up with snow.

I’ll be doing this two-hundred-page-challenge for a week. I have on the docket Sjon’s CoDex 1962 and Catherine Lacey’s Pew. It would seem that my choices for the most recent readathon (which I fancied as “sophisticated,” that sloppy word again) still toss a seasoning over my diet this week.

If I read two hundred pages a day, I think I could prune my outrageously long currently-reading list. Some of the books that I am reading, though, are mammoths: Pessoa by Richard Zenith, for example, which clocks in at over one thousand pages. But Pessoa is one of my favorite authors, so draping my eyes over one thousand pages is a thing of excitement, not intimidation.

—

My little horse must think it queer

It took me a long time to read two hundred books, per Goodreads. I joined the website in, I believe, 2015, but didn’t get too active until 2016. Every year, I set some outlandish goal that I have not met, though I am determined to make the break this year. Last year, I only managed thirty-six books out of a desired sixty.

I reread a few books every year. Right now, I am annotating one of my favorite books, The Diary of Anais Nin, Volume I. I am someone who prizes diaries — I own many of them from Rachel Corrie, Anne Frank, Sylvia Plath. But Nin’s are my favorite, and I used to sit, as a teenager with an air of quiet hungering for intellect, and read different volumes of Nin’s work at the library at San Juan College. I do keep my own diary — a pillow book — where I tell my journal all about my opinions on Poe and Pessoa and kabuki theater and Australopithecus.

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To stop without a farmhouse near

For awhile, I read everything I could about 9/11, because I am writing a book that features such a tragedy. I am probably on Lists, but my aim is to teach myself what it was like to live through that horror. The way the skin tingled like the air became a furnace, the way throats closed around unshed words, the way looking at the flag induced tears. Writing that scene in Canis Major transported me back to the time my third-grade class and I went to wrap blue, white, and red ribbons around the chainlink fence.

I am writing some poems to embed in Canis Major. All of them are written by a character named Louisa. One of them is titled “Saint Annie.” Louisa is a bit of a tough character to write, as she is simultaneously optimistic, kind, and a smidge hypocritical. These are the traits that I assigned to her from my list of attributes. I write out qualities — good and bad — on strips, then put the strips in a container, and draw out four per character so that I can do my best attempt at a rounded personality. Louisa is a poet, and that gives her a lot of dimension already, because we poets like to strut about on the page, pleased with ourselves when we come up with a sentence that we like.

—

Between the woods and frozen lake

I want to write a children’s book someday. As of yet, the plot and characters remain like shadowed figures in the closet of my mind. So some of these daily two hundred pages will be from children’s novels. I am thinking about starting with Esperanza Rising because I read and adored that book when I was that age. I remember the scene where Esperanza feeds some babies plums, they get sick, and she thinks to give them rice, which turns out to be the correct decision.

I have nothing against some of the sillier children’s books, or books that rely on scatalogical humor, but I think that I want to write the kind of book that moved me and changed me when I was a child. I’m thinking that there will be a dragon somewhere in the book. I was inspired by this tree that I once stood beneath while Kailee was at softball practice, and I saw a seed being dispersed and floating on the wind because it had what looked like wings. I have no idea what kind of tree it was, but it reminded me of a dragon.

—

The darkest evening of the year.

My mother kindly bought me a book called AI Ethics by Mark Coeckelbergh. She thought of me while she was browsing the bookstore of St. John’s College in Santa Fe. Philosophy has been missing from my shelves, so I put this book on my TBR list. Once I finish that, I may purchase Ludwig Wittgenstein because he is the philosopher of linguists, and I was a linguist once upon a time. I’d like to be a linguist again because I Iove cognitive science with my whole being.

—

He gives his harness bells a shake

There are some books that I want to put on my TBR pile. One is called If an Egyptian Cannot Speak English by Noor Naga. How exciting! I read a lot about the Arab Spring because I came of age in the shadow of those protests and I am still in awe of the courage of entire bounties of people. So it is important that some of those two hundred pages a day that I read are nonfiction and deal with the issues that matter.

One of my poems in one of my collections is about the Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, and Occupy Wallstreet. You see, I am proud of the work that Millennials and Gen Z are doing to protect entire communities. I really just wanted to write a poem to say thank you to my generation and the generation trotting up behind us because there are so many issues that are important — abortion rights and economic inequality — to young people. The people who fight for justice will always inspire me, and I hope my little poem can express that awe.

—

To ask if there is some mistake.

I am getting used to wearing contacts while I read. I still struggle to get the contact into my right eye. Yesterday, I gleefully texted my mother to tell her that I was going to start reading two hundred pages of Americanah, but then my cat, Bijou, sat on my lap and refused to let me read or write.

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The only other sound’s the sweep

Recently, I discovered that I like writing with a fountain pen. Being lefthanded, I am attuned to bleeding ink because I used to stand in the fountain in the hallway of my elementary school, scrubbing lead colored ink off my hands and talking to Jared, my fellow lefty who always washed his hands with mine. But my fountain pens don’t leak all over my skin, so it has been a success and I think one of these days, I will affix a feather to my pen so I can feel extra fancy.

—

Of easy wind and downy flake.

How much fantasy will I be reading this week where I am challenging myself to read two hundred pages a day? I may, if I get bored, start on His Dark Materials, as I own all three volumes but have not yet touched them. I love fantasy, speculative fiction, and stories that walk just on the periphery of what is possible. I am still working my way through The Wheel of Time, but there are a lot of books in that series (fifteen!) and one of my classmates in my workshop course was sweet enough to compare Canis Major to Don Quixote and His Dark Materials. What a compliment!

I am not sure the origin of my love of fantasy. It is something I have always known I loved, sort of like always knowing that I am lefthanded or that I have freckles. My earliest attempts at writing were piss-poor attempts at Harry Potter with a female protagonist named Hannah. My mother encouraged me to keep at it, even though I was not trafficking in anything original.

—

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep,

I had lunch with a friend named Vicki, a woman who inspires me. We ate Tibetan food. Our table was situated by some posters of the Dalai Lama, and I thought, while I waited for Vicki to arrive, that I would love to learn Tibetan. I perused Amazon and found a book that teaches its readers the script.

Vicki has written a phenomenal novel called Altitude Sickness. I want to read this again as part of my two hundred pages a day. Even if I did not know Vicki, even if she had not written me a letter of recommendation to my graduate program, I would be a fan because she knows how to pace a novel, just like Adichie and Americanah. When I read Altitude Sickness, I loved the lengths of the chapters.

—

But I have promises to keep,

I cannot believe that I have read two hundred and nine books. This year, I have read seventeen out of, as I said, a goal of sixty. I do not wish to be a collection of gears, grinding out books and stamping them a number to reach a discrete goal. I want to be a reader, not a literary accountant. If I want to read a new book, I will.

—

And miles to go before I sleep,

I drink tea when I read. I cannot help it. I have to make myself a cup of chai, which I buy in a purple container from World Market. I will make some tea after I finish this blog, because I am going to be reading Americanah soon, and I want all my senses engaged. I love the taste and texture and colors of words. I will always love the taste and texture and colors of words.

—

And miles to go before I sleep.