Summer Reading

I hope you all read my post introducing the concept of minimalism. I took the challenge to heart and for the following week I recycled the same 6 articles of clothing AND made a list of my 100 most essential possessions. I admit that I cheated a bit by making my pots and pans a single category of item on the list. But I’m happy to have gone through the exercise, because now I’m more aware of the things I own, the things I need, and it helped me to scale back a lot on what I consider to be nonessentials. And best of all, it helped me to feel extremely productive. With the added sense of productivity and the organization and uncluttered-ness of my living space, I feel that my mind is a lot more uncluttered and I am ready to put toward higher pursuits.

I personally feel just because I've graduated doesn’t mean that my learning comes to a standstill. With the added free time and the lack of obligatory reading from classes, I want to start ramping up my reading. I don’t just mean reading the newspaper or blogs (though I certainly appreciate you all reading my “local voice”!), but picking up a paperback (or an eReader device) and reading a full-fledged novel. I've already made it through Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice and Kate Chopin's The Awakening and Other Selected Short Stories. Below is a list of more classics and other novels that I hope to read, compliments of The Lisa Simpson Book Club on Tumblr:

 The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath

Ghost World, Daniel Clowes

The Adventures of Tin Tin, Hergé

Ethan Frome, Edith Wharton

Man and Superman, George Bernard Shaw

Pippi Longstocking, Astrid Lindgren

The Master of the Senate, Robert Caro

The Corrections, Jonathan Franzen

The Babysitter’s Club, Ann M. Martin

The Harry Potter series, J.K. Rowling

The Joy Luck Club, Amy Tan

The poems of Emily Dickinson

The works of Jane Austen (1 down!)

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, William L. Shirer

Grimm’s Fairy Tales

The poems of Robert Pinsky

The work of Joyce Carol Oates

The work of Gore Vidal

Leaves of Grass, Walt Whitman

A Separate Peace, John Knowles

The work of Tom Wolfe

Moneyball, Michael Lewis