夏天 reading list

this is a work in progress.

i feel like i always make lists but i hate lists. i resist lists. and actually i dunno if i want to add this one so much as whittle it down for the summer. i.e. i'd love feedback on what you think i *absolutely* must read (whether or not it's on this list or not - but i want what you consider important, essential books *cough*not necessarily "classics" haha*cough*).

in no particular order...

novels

~Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
~The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz
~Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
~American Knees - Shawn Wong
~Speak, Memory - Vladmir Nabokov
~The Master - Colm Toibin [thanks e.m. for constantly reminding me of this one]
~Mona in the Promised Land - Gish Jen [r.r. suggested this to me over janterm...i checked it out from the HC library...still haven't read!]
~Mrs. Dalloway - Virginia Woolf [mandatory-out-of-love reread]
~Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut [again, thanks e.m. ...finally gonna get around to vonnegut? maybe?]
~Tropic of Orange - Karen Tei Yamashita [i've stumbled upon scholarly work on this author that makes her seem really awesome...so now i need to find out for myself...]
~Fixer Chao - Han Ong
~A Tree Grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith
~Third Factory - Viktor Shklovsky [i guess this is a prose work, but i really dunno how to categorize it...:P]


also, it's about time i got around to more short stories by chekhov, raymond carver, lorrie moore, richard yates.

poetry

~Notes From a Divided Country - Suji Kwock Kim
~Collected Poems - Robert Hayden [love love love his work...so maybe it's time to really get into this rich, beautiful collection in its entirety]
~Human Dark With Sugar - Brenda Shaughnessy
~Secret Asian Man - Nick Carbó [i feel like this one's only available at amherst books...or else online, i guess]
~Blood Dazzler - Patricia Smith
~Names Above Houses - Oliver de la Paz
~Power Politics - Margaret Atwood
~The Colors of Desire - David Mura [a great discovery this semester]
~Love, Like Pronouns - Rosmarie Waldrop [who, having written a poem 'after' mei-me- brussenbrugge, reminds me that i ought to revisit mei-mei brussenbrugge...though i often feel like she's wayyy over my head]
~For the Confederate Dead - Kevin Young [started this semester, need to finish]
~Ardor - Karen An-Hwei Lee
~Alabanza: New and Selected Poems 1982-2002 - Martín Espada [future professor!]

and more: olena kalytiak davis, mary ruefle

anthologies

~Take Out: Queer Writing from Asian America [i might just steal this from the amherst college library for the summer...it's such a huge volume, and i'd love to really spend the time exploring it...]


**

perhaps i ought to begin a movie list, too. i just really, really need to see Ingmar Bergman's Persona.