A few of my favorite reads…
CONTEMPORARY & CANONICAL ǁ NEW & OLD.
Fiction ※ Poetry ※ Nonfiction ※ Drama
Hi.
Welcome to LitReaderNotes, a book review blog. Find book suggestions, search for insights on a specific book, join a community of readers.
A few of my favorite reads…
CONTEMPORARY & CANONICAL ǁ NEW & OLD.
Fiction ※ Poetry ※ Nonfiction ※ Drama
Welcome to LitReaderNotes, a book review blog. Find book suggestions, search for insights on a specific book, join a community of readers.
All tagged artistic life
Virginia Woolf is a household name when it comes to lyrically figurative writing, rambling through the interior lives of characters. Her brand of modernism pairs the poetic with the complex; she champions an intellectualism that many other modernists (as well as readers and critics that have come since) have branded snobbish and off-putting. And yet, Woolf’s writing, like that of other modernists (James Joyce, for example), attempts to capture the inner life of humanity. Her fiction and nonfiction alike, excavate the uniqueness that is human thought, love, experience. In her novel To The Lighthouse (originally published in 1927 and one of my favorites among her oeuvre) Woolf again takes up this project. In this version, her investigation is Beauty (yes, with a capital “B”), the artistic process, and the muse.
This winter I enjoyed all three of L. M. Montgomery’s Emily of New Moon books: Emily of New Moon (originally published 1923), Emily Climbs (1925), and Emily’s Quest (1927). Titular character and heroine, Emily Byrd Starr, feels the call to the creative life at a young age. There is a magic tug that draws her to put pen to page. As such, her story, told over the course of this trilogy, is very much a portrait of the artist as a young woman of sorts.
In an effort to read books that might help shake off the writer’s block I had suffered since May, I picked up a copy of Gilbert’s book, and I must say, as fall merged into winter this year. I am pleased I did. While Gilbert’s literary voice grates at me from time to time, I thoroughly enjoyed nearly all of her points and assertions in Big Magic and will encourage other creatives to give it a readthrough if they have not already. Big Magic provides readers with no-nonsense suggestions and best practices for shedding the fear of failure and endeavoring to create if called to do so.
