I recently joined shepherd.com, a fairly new site for an author to list her/his book as well as five others, along with the reason each of those five was chosen. I like seeing what books, besides their own, my favorite authors are recommending, and why. You might too.
It's much simpler and lots more fun than Goodreads (IMHO). Below is my listing. Click on the link to see a picture of the 5 books I chose to accompany "An Invitation to the Party" and why (and feel free to ignore the ads!). https://shepherd.com/best-books/aging
1 Comment
From the barefoot (because these books knocked my socks off!) book advisor: First, Jim Ray Daniels has stories, and you do want to read them; trust me. Second, Jennifer Grotz has a new book of poems, Still Falling with a gorgeous cover-glimpse of Caravaggio's St. Paul falling from his horse in "the Conversion." To convert you, here, a poem from her book Window left Open (start with this collection if you are unfamiliar with her poetry): Poppies There is a sadness everywhere present but impossible to point to, a sadness that hides in the world and lingers. You look for it because it is everywhere. When you give up, it haunts your dreams with black pepper and blood and when you wake you don’t know where you are. But then you see the poppies, a disheveled stand of them. And the sun shining down like God, loving all of us equally, mountain and valley, plant, animal, human, and therefore shouldn’t we love all things equally back? And then you see the clouds. The poppies are wild, they are only beautiful and tall so long as you do not cut them, they are like the feral cat who purrs and rubs against your leg but will scratch you if you touch back. Love is letting the world be half-tamed. That’s how the rain comes, softly and attentively, then with unstoppable force. If you stare upwards as it falls, you will see they are falling sparks that light nothing only because the ground interrupts them. You can hear the way they’d burn, the smoldering sound they make falling into the grass. That is a sound for the sadness everywhere present. The closest you have come to seeing it is at night, with the window open and the lamp on, when the moths perch on the white walls, tiny as a fingernail to large as a Gerbera daisy and take turns agitating around the light. If you grasp one by the wing, its pill-sized body will convulse in your closed palm and you can feel the wing beats like an eyelid’s obsessive blinking open to see. But now it is still light and the blackbirds are singing as if their voices are the only scissors left in this world. by Jennifer Grotz from Window Left Open You're welcome. |
We tend to write about what we know. I am a writer, thus this blog: Why write? What, when, where to write? Stay tuned. Archives
April 2024
|