The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo

The Triggering Town: Lectures and Essays on Poetry and Writing by Richard Hugo
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This might seem like a writing book by a poet, for poets. But it is just as valuable for other writers.
If you took each lesson or tip, and replaced the word 'poem' with 'novel' or 'story' (I can't say so much for scripts), you would have some great advice.
In my opinion, more prose writers could take a few lessons from poets anyway.
Of all the lessons, the one I appreciated the most was Hugo's sentiment that he was teaching 'his way' of writing, or showing us new writers how to find our own way. And that is so great. From high school through a creative writing degree to Twitter and the blogosphere, there is so much advice for writers out there. So when someone says they are going to teach me how to teach myself, I welcome it with relief and a smile.

Like many writing books, Hugo includes accounts from his life, and he uses the parts that inspired certain poems. I enjoyed these parts too, I always like to see what kind of life writers lead before/during their writing career.
Overall, this book is worth reading although some of it I'd heard at Uni. But it's always good to be reminded.


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Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi

Unbearable Lightness by Portia de Rossi
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I finished this book a week ago. I finished it in two days.
I haven't connected with a book this emotionally since Going Bovine by Libba Bray.
This was different of course, being non-fiction. A book about Portia de Rossi's struggle with Anorexia Nervosa and coming out.
I'm not anorexic, nor am I gay. But the way de Rossi wrote about her compulsivity with food and the fear of losing control which then leads to a loss of control in a hellish loop, touched on some deep issues for me.
I couldn't break away from the beautiful, honest prose. I cried when my Mum and sister came over and I had to stop reading. Not because I had to stop reading. Because I was dealing with my own anxiety issues through de Rossi's journey.
The whole last chapter I cried for her and myself.
Then the epilogue. It brought hope, and I felt relief. If she can come back from that obsession, I can certainly deal with my own problems. There is brightness in the future.

Now, one thing I asked myself before reading was: Can this celebrity write? Was there a ghostwriter?
Yes and no, respectively. There were passages where de Rossi's love of words was clear: in high school, she loved reading out Shakespeare and Poetry and giving emotion to the words.
And no one else was mentioned in the fine print. De Rossi is amazing and I hope she writes more.

Lastly, I loved the sense of Australianness I felt throughout the book. De Rossi hasn't lost her roots.


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The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards

The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Overall, this was a good book. It took me a long time to read, but that could be due to my busy schedule. But then, I'm one heck of a procrastinator, so if a book isn't so intriguing that I'm not putting things off to finish it, it's not going to be up there with my favourites.

One of the downfalls is something that many people praise in literary fiction. The imagery. Yes, it was beautifully descriptive. But sometimes the characters were so caught up in their little moments that I found my eye wandering down or across the page to the next bit of action.

The next thing, is that it's one of those books that has a few protagonists. I find these books really hard to read, and a books has to be really, really well written for me to be engrossed by every single protagonist.

My favourite story line in the book followed Caroline and Phoebe, maybe because I identified with Caroline the most, and thought she had the most to fight for in her story. Maybe because David was a self-involved piece of work and I just didn't CARE how much he was suffering with the decision he made. And Norah was insufferable too, but I tolerated her more because it wasn't her fault, and her character evolved enough that in the end I liked her.
In fact, considering what happens to David, I wondered why he was needed at all. Yes, it was his decision that the novel hinged on, but it was the way the other characters dealt with it that was more fascinating to me. The parallel stories of Caroline and Norah would have been sufficient for me, and maybe I would have liked the book better.

Anyway, good things. This book made me cry, and that says something for Edwards. And I was fascinated by what snippets were given to Caroline's fight to give Phoebe a fair life as a person with Down's Syndrome.

I do recommend this book to people interested in unlikely parents - I know I love this kind of story.


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Goodreads!

I discovered Goodreads about a week ago, and have been wanting to tell you about it. I don't have any friends on there yet *pouts*, because no one knows I'm there, and I don't know of anyone who is on there as well.

Also, I did a review of good ol' Sookie Stackhouse: Definitely Dead: A Sookie Stackhouse Southern Vampire Mystery #6. Otherwise known as True Blood for those familiar with the show. Because of the large volume of books I've read over my life, I'm going to only review the books I started reading since joining Goodreads.

In future, I'll try and cross-post my reviews here. I'd like to add a gadget for you guys to see what I'm currently reading, but tonight my 'Interwebs skillz' failed me.


PS My writing is coming along nicely.