Bookshelf downsizing project, a new book manuscript seed, and more!
Hello Holiday-overloaded readers! Hope you all had a fabulous Thanksgiving!
I have been alerted that perhaps I will be receiving this year one of those fancy gadgets on which you read books as one of my Christmas presents this year. This has caused me to think about which books from my overflowing and groaning bookcases I can retire – ie take to Half-Price Books or donate. (Glenn, by the way, is always cheerful about having to move fewer boxes of books. We have moved about thirteen times in the last thirteen years, and most of the contents of the moves, since we have little furniture, is, sad to say, heavy boxes of books.) Dictionaries and thesaurus for sure – heavy, hard to move, and easy to access remotely. All my old paperback Shakespeare, since the classics are easy to access via the reader-gadgets (don’t know which one I’m getting yet.) What else? Can I let go of other paperback classics, my Austen and Tolstoy and etc? How about old college textbooks? Other books – like my colored Fairy Books, signed poetry books, etc – are valuable to me as reminders, as keepsakes. Often my research books – on nuclear power, Japanese culture, feminism in comic books, annotated collections of folk tales – take up a lot of space, but I find myself going back to them, so I’m keeping most of those.
Do those of you who have already made the leap to the dark side of e-readers have any advice on what to get rid of? I have to say, I’m kind of excited to see what my own book looks like on a real e-reader.
Over the weekend, I finally gathered up all the poems I’ve written in the last year or so, the ones that don’t belong in the two finished yet unpublished manuscripts I have, and so, this means…starting a new book manuscript. Really, since the number of poems is only in the teens, it’s only the beginnings, a sprout, a small shoot from a little seed. I can’t really see the vision of the manuscript yet. It seems more lighthearted than my other books, for now, anyway, about getting over old loves, moving from state to state, and examining cultural icons (well that, at least, is familiar territory.) I’m worried because the poems don’t seem that…angsty. Not deep enough, maybe. Is that a thing to be anxious about, I wonder?
PS Thinking about Christmas shopping lists? I promise to do a longer list of books I recommend from 2011 soon…but until then, consider picking up a copy of She Returns to the Floating World, from the publisher, from Amazon, from Powells, or from local Seattle legend Open Books…it’s suitable for husbands, little brothers, friends who love Hayao Miyazaki, and others! 🙂 You can also order it directly from me, signed, and of course, with a little swag surprise for the holidays…https://webbish6.com/orderform.htm
Jeannine Hall Gailey served as the second Poet Laureate of Redmond, Washington and the author of Becoming the Villainess, She Returns to the Floating World, Unexplained Fevers, The Robot Scientist’s Daughter, and winner of the Moon City Press Book Prize and SFPA’s Elgin Award, Field Guide to the End of the World. Her latest, Flare, Corona from BOA Editions, was a finalist for the Washington State Book Award. She’s also the author of PR for Poets, a Guidebook to Publicity and Marketing. Her work has been featured on NPR’s The Writer’s Almanac, Verse Daily and The Year’s Best Fantasy and Horror. Her poems have appeared in The American Poetry Review, Poetry, and JAMA.
