What do your reading choices say about you? Since beginning graduate school, I have been turning this question over in my mind as I listened to others in my classes mention who their favorite authors are. Most of them are people I have never heard of or read but are rather famous in the contemporary lit world. Typically, I hold my tongue and don’t mention what I read for fear of being ridiculed or looked down upon. This led to a greater question: why do people read certain books?
Do people (especially those in academia) read for fun or do they read certain books because they feel it is expected of them? As I continue my journey through the MFA in Creative Writing program, I find myself wondering what my professors read, especially when they are writers or poets as well. What we read automatically becomes ingrained in our beings and eventually comes out in our writing. I can attest to the fact that when I read a book I love, I am inspired to write and often I will lean toward that genre or some theme found in that work. If I read a book I had to drag myself through, it typically slows my writing to a crawl. Oddly, while I didn’t love reading Virginia Woolf for the most part, her works had a huge influence in the way I deal with close narration and “head hopping” as others call it. Continue reading “You Are What You Read”
Kara Jorgensen 