My My Ideal Bookshelf

My Ideal Bookshelf is an internet thing that turned into a book thing. I am starting a personal-type project based on this thing. Sort of. My "My Ideal Bookshelf" does not consist of the books I cannot do without; for me, it is a way:

1. to read books I have been meaning to read
2. to allow myself the freedom to read with abandon and without pressure to produce writing
3. to mentally seek solutions to some "problems" (the good kind of problem! like, a thought problem!) I have been thinking about in regards to writing
4. to become a better writer in terms of understanding approaches to large-scale structures
5. to begin the weeding-out process before I move this summer

I have a long-standing, weird, compulsive, love-with-abandon relationship to reading and purchasing books. Grad school has made my compulsion much, much worse. Not only do I check a million books out of the library at once (give or take), but I also buy books with abandon. "I got this," I say, doling out my meager wages. "I'll be able to read this book tomorrow. Plus I need it a) because I love the writer, b) for a thing I'm writing, c) for a "class" (this can include self-prescribed "supplemental" reading or research for a paper, in addition to books I actually buy for class), and/or d) because I have made a mental chain of associations that means me finding this book is a co-incidence and therefore I must have it."

I told you. Compulsion. (The Compulsion is something I'm also attempting to address re: this project; we shall see whether or not I'm successful on that front.)

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This Winter Break, my attention belongs only to this bookshelf (plus a few stray titles not pictured [look at that Compulsion go!]).

Pile One: my fairy tale pile, an ongoing love & obsession & thought project.

Pile Two: books by authors I love or who've been highly recommended to me, but which I haven't had time to read because a) graduate school and b) teaching and c) I have a Reading Problem, obviously.

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Amidst the craziness of writing my Final Seminar Paper Ever, I vowed that I would devote my Very Last Long Student Holiday to reading. Only to reading. I'd also just turned in a draft of my thesis, and I thought I needed a break.

After one weekend of slothful recovery, I'm Absolutely Bored and ready to work again. So I plan to write my way through this reading adventure, too.

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FIRST UP: 

Hollywood glamour meets Mediterranean Italy. Let's do this.