"No Direction in Life" Book List

This is my complete February Reading List - sorry to post so late.  Check out my March Reading List which I plan to post by March 8^th.

·    New Release : The Selected Works of T.S. Spivet, by Reif Larsen; Penguin Press 2009.  What better way to find my direction than by reading a book about a boy cartographer?

·    Classic: Gulliver’s Travels, by Jonathan Swift; The Easton Press, 1976.  This was the only book that T.S.’s great-great-great grandfather read other than the bible.

·    Nonfiction: You Are Here: Personal Geographies and Other Maps of the Imagination, by Katherine Harmon, Princeton Architectural Press, October 1, 2003.  T.S. mapped his personal geographies from how to climb a mountain to shake hands with God, to the flow of dinner conversation at home, to his top-nine favorite movies and their thematic relationships.  A great way to discover my own personal geography.

·    Juvenile: S is for Smithsonian: American’s Museum Alphabet, by Marie and Roland Smith, Illustrated by Gijsbert van Frankenhuyzen; Sleeping Bear Press, 2010.  T.S. is going to the Smithsonian to receive the Baird Award.  I thought this alphabet book would be too easy for my seven- and nine-year olds, but I soon found that even I had a lot to learn from the informative text.  Fascinating stuff.

·    Self-improvement:  Maps of the Imagination: The Writer as Cartographer, by Peter Turchi; Trinity University Press, 2004.  Turchi, a writer, uses the extended metaphor of writing as mapping the world of story. 

What to Read? Part 3: How to Make a Reading List

Last post, I introduced the Reader’s Formula for Selecting Books.  It looked like this:

Values ((Assets + x) – (Desires + y) – Liabilities – Requirements) = Optimal Reading List

This post, I am going to give an example from my reading life to demonstrate how to use this formula.  The first part of the formula is “values”, which I said are variable.  They determine what experiences we deem important or not, and influence our judgment and behaviors.  For simplicity, and to avoid sounding like a Sociology 101 text, I call this “life acting upon us”, because essentially, our life circumstances give rise to our values.

            So, what do I value these days?  What filter is life applying to me to influence which experiences I let in and which ones I release?  Lately, I have been feeling adrift, directionless.  After two years of working regularly to revise my manuscript, I find myself ready to give up on the project.  My mind resists quitting, but my behaviors tell me I already have.  I can’t make myself work on it anymore, yet nothing has replaced this piece of work in my mind.  No new ideas.  No desire to do anything else.  I am adrift on a plain of apathy.  How to find my way?

            I decide to read to take my mind off my failure.  I browse the stacks in the library, hoping to be inspired by something.  My eye lands upon the cover of a book, featured by the library staff.  It is called The Selected Works by T. S. Spivet by Reif Larsen.  I have seen this book many times, and although intrigued by it, I never took it home.  This particular day, feeling lost and in need of a map to navigate my professional aspirations, I thought, “What better way to reorient myself than to read a book about a boy cartographer?”  If being lost was what life was giving me, then finding my way was what I valued.  Therefore, in my reader’s formula, v = Finding my way.