Three Random Things

1st Random Thing
Friday, I got a new bookcase, a very much needed second bookcase, and I still don't have enough room for all my books. Valerie says I should take some books to Half-Priced Books and get rid of some of them. I agreed that I might have a few books that I could bear to part with--books that I didn't buy for myself and never intend to read. However, I know how futile this exercise will be. I will sell those and buy some more with the money that I get from them. I just can't stop myself from buying new books. I just can't stop finding new worlds that I want to inhabit. Last week, I went to the Houston Chronicle's Annual Book Sale. I bought 5 or 6 books, one hardback, all brand new, for $9.00. After I bought those books, I told Valerie that I had been toying with the idea of trying to read all of the books that I have purchased and not read yet before I buy another book. I thought that would be a great journey to embark on and write about on my blog. I was really thinking that I would accept this challenge, but now I'm craving a mystery to read. Of course, I could go to the library and check one out, but it's so much more fun to buy my own and take my time reading it. I am the slowest reading English teacher that I know.

2nd Random Thing
Saturday, I finished reading The Namesake by Jhumper Lahiri. During Thanksgiving holidays, I had devoured her Pulitzer Prize winning book of short stories, The Interpreter of Maladies. I usually don't like books of short stories that much, but I loved hers. I like her style, which is not extremely unique, but she always seems to choose just the right words. Her writing is not flowery or complicated. She just tells these wonderful stories about the clash of traditional Bengali culture and contemporary American culture. She has a way of getting the reader to sympathize with even her most unlikable characters. I am adding her to my favorite authors list.

3rd Random Thing
I am taking a fiction writing workshop this summer. It is my third writing workshop, and I am really enjoying this one. Each week, we do writing exercises that really challenge me to be creative. I've never really tried to write fiction so I need to be challenged. Today, I spent quite a while working on my story, which is not due for several weeks. In the past two workshops, poetry and personal essay, I have been true to my procrastinating self and waited until almost the last minute to do write my submissions. However, I have decided that I need to put more time into the short story so I won't be so ashamed of what I hand in. I want to write something that I know I have worked on and can be proud of whether others like what I have or not. Enough about that, tonight the instructor gave us a cool homework assignment. We are supposed to get in the habit of noticing the details in the world around us. For the next week, we are supposed to write down one incredible thing we observe each day. The thing can be incredibly beautiful or incredibly horrible; it must be incredible in some way. I plan to post my observations for the next week since I won't be able to share them in class next week. (I'm going out of town.) Therefore, I will share them with the two people who purposely read my blog and anyone else who hapens upon it.