What I'm Reading These Days

On my bedside table I have a stack of library books. I always feel like I've given myself a real gift when I come home with books from the library. I look forward to each night when it's time to go to bed and read. I always overdo it though, and borrow too many books at once. Then I face the pressure of getting them all read before their time runs out and they have to be returned. I have novels and poetry collections, and I have a large book about the life of Van Gogh, complete with photographs of some of his paintings and sketches. As if I didn't have enough, today I borrowed yet another book - 'A Complicated Kindness', by Miriam Toews. I've just started reading it. So far I'm impressed.

I have a funny connection to this author. My name is Marian Toews; nearly identical to her name. I was raised in a Mennonite home as she was. I have written about those experiences, as she has done with this book (although it's sold as fiction, I'm told it's actually her life story *correct me if I'm wrong). A year or so ago, I queried a literary agent, asking for representation. She told me she had just taken Miriam as a client! When Miriam's book came out, several of my online friends emailed me with congratulations. And recently my mother who is partly estranged from me, wrote me asking if that was me accepting a literary award. When I borrowed the book today from the library, the librarian asked if I was the author. It doesn't seem to end (ha).

I've nearly finished reading 'Ariel'; a collection of poetry by Sylvia Plath. She wrote these poems two months before she committed suicide. I'm a big fan of Sylvia Plath. Her poetry is beautiful. I was thinking, though, as I read this collection - she died before this book was published. Imagine if she never intended these poems to be published? Or maybe she would have preferred more time to edit them? I often let a new poem or story sit for a while, sometimes even a month or more. It's amazing the improvements that become apparent when you look at something the first time after not reading if for a while. The poems in this collection are excellent though. I've been looking for ways I would change them if they were mine, and I hardly find anything I would do differently.