Independent Booksellers + eBooks = Awesome

I got a Kindle a little over a year ago, and traded up to an iPad last month. Eight of the books that will be in my top ten for 2011 were read on an ereader. (Confession: I did make a second purchase of one, Leah Hager Cohen's The Grief of Others in hardcover because I loved it and wanted a version signed by the author. I see this kind of thing happening with some regularity in my ereading future).

I love that I can just slip my ereader into my purse instead of lugging one or, on vacation, many books around. I love that I don't have to find more space in my already overcrowded home for the books I cannot seem to stop buying, new year's resolutions about using the library notwithstanding. But I've also felt sad and a little ashamed that I am neglecting my several local independent bookstores.

No more! Last week I read in the Porter Square Books blog that many ereader users can buy some or all of their books from independent booksellers. Here's the full list, organized alphabetically. I haven't tried it out yet but intend to do so with my next purchase and will let you know how it goes!

Happy New Year

One of the things I love best about milestones like New Years and birthdays is the opportunity to make a fresh start.

This is, of course, completely delusional. You can make a fresh start any time—every Tuesday, if you so desire. Or maybe you can never really make a fresh start, but I'm in a good mood and not going there.

So the blog has gotten a bit of housekeeping this weekend. I've restarted the poetry and non-poetry top 10 lists in the right margin. I've gone through and deleted or posted all the entries in "draft" state that I'm not actually drafting (yes, little post on sloth, I am never getting back to you—ironic, no?). I've back-filled top 10 lists for all the years I've been keeping them, so they are now all in one place (here).

It feels good. This is defininitely the kind of deluded I could get used to.

Happy New Year to all!

Monday Morning Quote: Sharon Olds

Poems like mine—I don't call them confessional, with that tone of admitting to wrong-doing. My poems have done more accusing than admitting. I call work like mine "apparently personal". Or in my case apparently very personal.

—Sharon Olds, interviewed in The Guardian in 2008

Some of my favorite Sharon Olds poems:
First Thanksgiving
I Go Back to May 1937
The Promise

The Final Top 10 for 2010

Fire to Fire, by Mark Doty

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake, by Aimee Bender

The Ticking Is the Bomb, by Nick Flynn

The Art of Description by Mark Doty

Name All the Animals, by Alison Smith

A Poetry Handbook, by Mary Oliver

The Wild Iris, by Louise Glück

Native Guard, by Natasha Trethewey

All-American Poem, by Matthew Dickman

Rock and Roll Will Save Your Life, by Steve Almond

This has sat in my "drafts" folder for almost a year, waiting for me to come up with something else to say for it, and I'm giving up and moving on to 2011. 2010 was the year I started reading a lot of poetry, and I think for 2011 I will have separate lists for poetry and prose -- see the sidebar.

Monday Morning Quote: Steve Martin on Inspiration

Through the years, I have learned there is no harm in charging oneself up with delusions between moments of valid inspiration.

—Steve Martin, Born Standing Up: A Comic's Life

I read this book after seeing a video of a conversation between Connie Willis and Neil Gaiman at the 2011 World Fantasy Convention in San Diego, CA (below). At the end of the conversation Ms. Willis, a favorite author of mine, suggested that they each recommend one book for the attendees to read, and this was her choice.