№ 32 reading list: Woolf, Hardwick & new books

Here is the reading list I promised. Perhaps I should have combined two lists into one because I have started reading books that will be on my next one. And I confess that I'm already looking longingly at books that will be on the list thereafter. One of those is Letters of Leonard Woolf. That would be the husband of Virginia, the man to thank for the access to her personal material, letters, diaries, etc. I enjoy reading letter collections, especially literary ones. Warner and Maxwell's letters on the new list, and in my image above, are gold. Each letter is well crafted and shining through is the mutual respect these writers and friends had for one another.

№ 32 reading list:

1  The Years · Virginia Woolf
2  Virginia Woolf · Hermione Lee
1  A Room of One's Own · Virginia Woolf [rereading]
3  The Uncollected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick · edited by Alex Andriesse
4  A Splendid Intelligence: The Life of Elizabeth Hardwick  · Cathy Curtis
5  De Profundis and Other Prison Writings · Oscar Wilde
7  The Element of Lavishness: Letters of Sylvia Townsend Warner and

William Maxwell 1938-1978  · edited by Michael Steinman

On my new list is Hermione Lee's biography of Virginia Woolf, which I'm about to finish and can highly recommend to all Woolf fans. Unfortunately, I cannot recommend Woolf's novel The Years. More on that disappointment later. My blog readers know that Elizabeth Hardwick is a favourite; on the list is a new essay collection and the only available biography of her. Now, let's look at a different list, my wish list.

Left: The autobiographical writing of poet Robert Lowell was published in August;
right: Elizabeth Hardwick on the cover of Darryl Pinckney's new book

The wish list keeps getting longer and I would like to mention two new additions. Come Back in September by Darryl Pinckney comes out in October. The book is about his friendship with Hardwick and the editor Barbara Epstein. Both founded the literary magazine The New York Review of Books and were best friends and neighbours on W 67th Street in New York. Memoirs came out in August, a collection of the autobiographical writing of poet Robert Lowell (he was Hardwick's ex). Critics have highly praised it.

A nod to my next reading list

images mine, appeared on Instagram 03/08/22 and 17/09/22

№ 16 reading list | Black History Month (UK)

Libraries are my happy place. Or so I thought. Last week I was at the library with a notebook, in which I have written down some of the titles I would like to read. As you can imagine, on my way there I was like a little kid going to Disneyland. As I walked up the stairs and entered the floor of the humanities (this is the university library, it's big), I was in a state of bliss, walking between the rows of bookshelves. Browsing books, touching books. Removing books from the reading list I already had in my mind to make space for books that demanded to be on it. Putting books back on the list to perhaps remove them again. Normal library behaviour.

Then something happened, something I was not prepared for: I experienced a moment of panic. For a few seconds, as I stood by the first row of shelves of American fiction, it suddenly dawned on me how many books there were on that floor, on all those shelves: In this lifetime I would never be able to finish my to-read list, which keeps getting longer. I cannot be the only book lover who has experienced this fear. No way. There better be an afterlife, with a library that has all your unread titles just waiting for you. There better be.

№ 16 reading list:
1  Blue Nights  by Joan Didion
2  Go Tell It on the Mountain  by James Baldwin
3  Sing, Unburied, Sing  by Jesmyn Ward
4  The Human Stain  by Philip Roth
5  Stet  by Diana Athill
6  Train Dreams  by Denis Johnson
7  The Bookshop  by Penelope Fitzgerald
8  Do Not Say We Have Nothing  by Madeleine Thien
9  The Collected Essays of Elizabeth Hardwick  ed. by D. Pinckney

On Saturday - you may have seen it on Instagram already - I read Didion's memoir Blue Nights in one go. She wrote the book after the death of her daughter Quintana, who was only 39 when she died. (She wrote The Year of Magical Thinking after the death of her husband, author John Gregory Dunne.) I liked Blue Nights. It's not a sob story that makes you reach for the tissue. Didion's style isn't emotionally overloaded. She is just trying to make sense of it all. Trying to find answers to questions that cannot be answered.

October is Black History Month in the UK (February in the US). I'm showing my support with two novels on the list, by James Baldwin and Jesmyn Ward. She won The National Book Award 2017 for Sing, Unburied, Sing. It was her second win; in 2011 she won for Salvage the Bones.