This post appeared in July at my blog another writing mom, and is my own original work.
I was looking at this big stack of books in my home office, books I’m dying to read, and rhetorically asking myself how to make time for them. I thought, I need someone to hold me accountable.
Book club? Omg if I schedule one more thing to have to go to…
Some kind of email book club? Still probably a deadline, and I want this to be fun and loose so I actually do it.
Goodreads? No more social media.
So I’m gonna use this space to hold myself accountable. I’m going to read memoirs and blog about them. Not really reviews, just informal responses, maybe with a little real life splashed in. No rules. Some of the memoirs I read will be second or third reads. Sometimes I will link to posts I’ve done on these books elsewhere. Sometimes I will write a lot, sometimes only a little. I might read three in a month and then none for three months.
But I’m going to read 100 of them.
I might be losing it. Or it’s the best idea I’ve ever had.
Read a memoir, blog about a memoir, repeat. Preparation for my own, because I AM writing one, don’t want it to be shitty or derivative, and am good with the process taking a long time.
As I’m relying on chunks of free time heretofore unknown to me to read these books, this project might actually outlive me, you see.
Now accepting recommendations in the comments, please. Stay tuned for posts on my bedside table books in residence: Lidia Yuknavitch’s The Chronology of Water, Roxane Gay’s Hunger, and Mary Karr’s The Art of Memoir.