Why Enemies to Lovers?

This is a good question because in my own romantic life, I don’t think I could ever stand being around an enemy long enough to ever fall in love with them. I don’t know about other people, but that just seems far-fetched. That said, there have been a few friends that I didn’t particularly care for at first (and vice versa). So who knows? Maybe it would have been possible.

I love reading enemies to lovers stories because I feel like they are ripe for great dialogue and imaginative storytelling. How do you plausibly get two characters who hate each other to fall in love? You have to keep putting them together in interesting and different ways until finally they connect. Then everything gets screwed up again. Then they reconnect and stay connected.

But this is a reading column, so we’ll shift gears to some recommended reading within the enemies to lovers realm…

Enemies to Lovers Reading List

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

I’ll start with the obvious. I almost left this one off the list. But I am a firm believer in knowing your literary tradition. I think it helps you better keep things new and fresh as a writer. Anyway, we all know Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy and how they hated each other—her family kept getting in the way by being embarrassing, bad communication, that horribly unromantic proposal…but then it just eventually clicked.

For modern retellings of Pride and Prejudice, be sure to check out Bridget Jones’s Diary by Helen Fielding and Eligible by Curtis Sittenfeld.

The Hating Game by Sally Thorne

Full disclosure: I haven’t read this one yet, but once I realized that enemies to lovers romances were my jam, I immediately bought it. This one takes the enemies to lovers situation to the workplace. Here, we have two people competing for a promotion. I can’t wait to see what kind of hijinks they pull to make the other look bad, while also not making themselves look so bad that they lose out on the job.

The Unhoneymooners by Christina Lauren

I believe it was this book that sealed the deal for me with enemies to lovers. Olive’s twin sister gets married and the entire wedding party except for Olive and her nemesis Ethan come down with a horrible bout of food poisoning. So Olive and Ethan get sent on the honeymoon instead. In order to not lose out on the trip, they have to act like they are the happy couple. 

Beach Read by Emily Henry

I first bought this one to read on the beach. The protagonists of this one met in a creative writing workshop and hated each other. Augustus writes literary fiction and January writes romance, but for the summer they decide to swap genres. To help in the process, they take each other on field trips to introduce the other writer to elements of the genre they are trying. I really enjoyed this one and kept getting angry at people interrupting my reading—it was that un-put-down-able.

Set on You by Amy Lea

I interviewed Amy for DIY MFA Radio back in the spring. We had a great conversation about how Millennials are approaching the romance genre and how she incorporated body-positivity into her debut romance novel. This one is about a social media influencer and a firefighter who compete over squat racks at the gym, which is a special place for Crystal. It gets even more complicated when they find out their grandparents are marrying each other. I love how family dynamics add an extra layer to this enemies to lovers read.

For Butter or Worse by Erin LaRosa

This is another one I got to read for the podcast and it will be out later in July. In this episode LaRosa and I do a deep dive specifically on the enemies to lovers trope, so keep your eyes peeled. In this novel, the two main characters, Nina and Leo, cohost a popular cooking show and aren’t very subtle about how much they hate each other. After Nina quits the show during a live taping, the two must start fake dating in order to save their reputations. What could go wrong?

Honey and Spice by Bolu Babalola

This is another one I haven’t read yet, but that’s because it’s not out at the time of my writing this post. It sounds so interesting though! The New York Times article I read that introduced me to this one talks about how Babalola’s writing is so witty and full of observations on human nature. Kiki has just denounced Malakai as The Wastemen of Whitewell on her campus radio show. Then the two start fake dating to save both of their reputations. I know—more fake dating—but it’s just so cringe-worthy and so juicy at the same time.

Tell us in the comments: What’s your favorite enemies to lovers book?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Enemies to Lovers appeared first on DIY MFA.

As a person who mostly writes non-fiction, I definitely make room for fiction in my life. For a long time, I was very selective about the books I would read and stuck mostly to the classics. But the more involved I got on Bookstagram, the more contemporary literary fiction I began reading. This kept me going for quite a while because there’s a lot of variety within that umbrella.

However, the last year has led to a veritable explosion in the genres I read. I started picking up a lot of contemporary romance novels last summer, probably because Taylor Jenkins Reid’s last couple of novels have been pretty good gateways to romance. Lately, I’ve been picking up more YA (probably because of the upcoming Writer Igniter YA Summit) and sci-fi (probably because of the podcast). But I still get a heavy mix of romance and literary fiction and non-fiction as well.

For whatever reason, this topic has been on my mind for a while. Perhaps it’s because I’ve been in a bit of a reading slump and have been reading widely to try to break it. But the more I think about it, the more I can see the benefits of reading widely, both as readers and as writers.

Benefits of Reading Widely

You can learn from different genres.

This is a benefit of reading widely that I hadn’t thought of before a recent podcast interview. I was asking the author about her inspiration for the book we were discussing and she talked about how she was inspired by a number of genres, not just the one she was writing in.

She pulled craft lessons from different genres. Sci-fi and fantasy novels do an excellent job of world building. Romance novels do a great job of creating character arcs. And thrillers can teach you a lot about plot and pacing. 

To be sure, you need all three elements within a single story. But when you think about what draws readers to different genres, this rings pretty true.

Sometimes you just need a break from your genre.

Like I already mentioned, I mostly write non-fiction, so if I only read within my genre, I’d never get to read novels. I love novels! They are a great escape for me.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t like reading too much of the same thing over and over without a break. Even though I frequently tell myself that it’s a good idea to go ahead and buy book 2 of a series or another book by the author I’ve been reading and loving, I never wind up reading another book by the same author after I’ve finished one. My brain just craves something different and I would venture to guess you’re the same.

It’s definitely important to be well-versed within your genre because you need to know the tradition you’re coming from as well as what’s been done so you can write something fresh. You also need to know what other people are doing currently, again so you can carve out your own niche within the genre. And of course you like reading the genre you write, otherwise why would you write that genre?

But I think it’s important to give yourself a break sometimes so that you don’t get burnt out. 

This leads me to my final point about the importance of reading widely…

It can spark creativity.

Another author I interviewed for the podcast said she doesn’t really have a genre, but she gets inspired by the different genres she reads. She wrote a thriller when she was reading a lot of thrillers and she wrote a sci-fi when she was reading a lot of sci-fi.

I think this makes a lot of sense. Inevitably, whatever we read shows up in some form in our writing—I’ve heard of authors who don’t read or avoid certain genres when they are in heavy drafting mode because they don’t want outside influences seeping into their work—so why wouldn’t it also spark an idea in the first place?

There have been plenty of times when I’ve had creative energy to burn, but no focus for it. The usual things aren’t speaking to me, so I look for a different outlet in the hopes that something sticks. And it usually does. Don’t be afraid to go looking for that source of inspiration.

These are just three of the benefits of reading widely. There are tons of other reasons you should consider reading widely.

Tell us in the comments: What are your reasons for reading widely?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: In Praise of Reading Widely appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’ve been doing a bit of rereading like I shared last month, but I’ve been reading plenty of new and new-to-me books. As a result, I had a hard time picking one great book to talk about this month, so I thought I’d share three books that have been dominating my spring reading. These are the three books that I am juggling as they compete for my precious time, attention, and affection. I hope something catches your eye.

Spring Reading List

Seek You: A Journey through American Loneliness by Kristen Radtke

Initially, I had planned for this May Book Nook post to be solely about this book, but I’m still reading it. I’m really not sure how this graphic memoir flew under my radar when it came out last year, but I happened across it last week and immediately knew I needed to read it. 

Radtke initially began her research for this book in 2016. Then, in 2020, the topic became beyond timely. I love her early discussion about the evolution of laughter in the human species and how it fosters connection. I remember an old episode of Seinfeld where Elaine and George are unexpectedly forced to spend time together without Jerry. The next day Jerry asks how it went and Elaine tells him it was pretty meh, except for when they bonded over making fun of Jerry. As someone who loves reading and writing humor, this really rang true for me.

Further, I love her choice to write this as a graphic memoir as opposed to straight prose. The images really participate in getting across her point and her research. Very well done. I can’t wait to keep reading.

Burnout: The Secret to Unlocking the Stress Cycle by Emily Nagoski and Amelia Nagoski 

I’ve had a bit of a long-term flirtation with this book. I started reading it last summer and inexplicably set it aside. Then I picked it up again in both the fall and the winter. I may have even mentioned it in a previous column. It’s great, life-changing information, but I’ve been too burnt out to read about burnout.

No more. I finally bought the audiobook and I’ve begun listening to it in 40-minute increments while I go walking a few times a week. Exercise, the book says, is the number one best way of completing the stress cycle. You see, there’s a difference between managing the stressor and the stress, and getting rid of the stressor doesn’t physiology rid our bodies of the stress chemicals. These incomplete stress cycles accumulate over time until something bad happens.

I love their writing style, which blends science and research with pop culture references and easy-to-digest advice. It is geared towards women simply because men and women face different societal expectations and pressures, and (like old heart attack studies completely missed the fact that women can have different symptoms than men) I kind of like knowing that something as important as unlocking the stress cycle is geared toward someone like me.

Animal by Lisa Taddeo

I have this thing where if a book receives a ton of hype, I can’t read it right away. Don’t get me wrong—I’ll totally buy the book, but I just have a hard time reading it. I don’t know if that’s because I can’t process my own thoughts in the midst of all the others swirling about on Bookstagram or maybe it’s a case of wrong book, wrong time. Nonetheless, I pre-ordered this one, the fiction debut of the author who wrote Three Women (which also took me a few starts and stops to read), and promptly set it aside.

I’ve been doing a lot of tweaking with my writing and this book is really jibing with the voice I want to develop for my narrator. She’s edgy, kinda screwed up, but honest and raw. The narrator, Joan, witnesses a pretty horrific act of violence and leaves town. She drives to LA, where she searches for Alice in an effort to make sense of her past.

I love that this is an exploration of female rage and the path back. Still, so often female characters and writers are expected to be a certain way. This novel subverts those expectations. Or maybe it creates new expectations, new ways of being. I am totally digging the vibe of this novel and the journey of this character.

Who knows? Maybe by the time this article is published, I’ll have finished all three of these books. I’d love to think so. They are all so addicting and are speaking to different parts of myself. And isn’t that really why we read in the first place?

Tell us in the comments: What books are on your spring reading list?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven and Chaos Coordinator at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: My Spring Reading appeared first on DIY MFA.

As you watch a Nora Ephron movie or—better yet!—read something she wrote, you can tell that she loved words, characters, and storytelling. She is famous for having said, “Everything is copy,” which is one of the truest things I have ever heard about writing and art. And she totally lived it! She mined her divorce from Carl Bernstein to write her hilarious novel Heartburn, which she also adapted into the screenplay for the movie.

Meeting Nora Ephron

I had seen her movies, of course. I remember watching You’ve Got Mail in theatres and I was utterly captivated by the power of books in other people’s lives. For me, it was one of those moments where I realized that it wasn’t just me.

But I don’t think I truly met Nora Ephron until after she died.

In 2014, my life (and the lives of my mom, dad, uncle, and grandma) revolved around visiting my beloved papa in one hospital facility or another. It consisted of a lot of sitting while he dozed. I’m not good at sitting and doing nothing, so I made sure to bring books with me. But when you’re constantly being interrupted by nurses, aides, visitors, etc, it’s difficult to get into the groove of a novel.

That’s where Nora came in. I had purchased The Most of Nora Ephron when it came out in 2013 and randomly decided to bring it with me. It’s a long volume, clocking in at just over 550 pages. But it contains multitudes.

Robert Gottlieb, who compiled the volume, arranged it by types of writing. You get to meet Nora Ephron the journalist, the novelist, the foodie, the blogger, and the essayist, among other her personas. 

As I flipped through the book, I gravitated toward the shorter pieces that I could finish in one gulp. These were by and large under 10 pages. And they were funny! It was a nice break to get to laugh when things sucked so much.

After that initial introduction, I began purchasing her individual volumes of essays: Wallflower at the Orgy, I Feel Bad About My Neck, I Remember Nothing, Crazy Salad, and Scribble, Scribble (those last two conveniently combined into a single volume). 

Whenever I finish a book, I sign my name and write the date on the inside of the front cover. Looking back at these books now, I can see that I read them in the days immediately after my papa passed. Those books, those essays, provided the balm I apparently needed in order to get through. Humor is, after all, a great medicine.

Realizing the Larger Context

As time passed and I became more serious about this whole writing thing, I began seeing Nora Ephron in a new light. I still thought she was funny as hell, but I became more interested in the arc of her career as well. She wrote a bit of everything. 

While I don’t harbor any desire to write screenplays, I do want to write essays. I want to write a novel. I want to write about food. I want to write widely because there’s just so much out there to explore. And I love seeing that somebody has done so. 

I know other authors have done it (hello, Joan Didion) but Nora Ephron was the first one I really noticed, which makes her special to me. Plus, her style is more intuitive and natural to me, which is why I gravitate toward her so strongly. 

Essays are my first love as a writer and probably the genre I’ll most frequently write in. And I have to credit Nora Ephron with that. She sparked an interest in personal essays that led me to David Sedaris and Joan Didion, then onto Samantha Irby, Rebecca Solnit, and so many others.

When you start something new and you’re alone, it’s kind of like the first day of high school. You walk into the cafeteria and you don’t know where to sit. Your eyes scan the room. You observe. You try to find connections amongst the people at the different tables so you know where you might fit in. 

Well, as I was scanning the writers’ cafeteria, Nora Ephron looked up, caught my eye, smiled a welcoming smile, and beckoned me over. 

I found my table. And I hope you find yours. 

Tell us in the comments: Have you ever read any of Nora Ephron’s books? What did you think?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Ode to Nora Ephron appeared first on DIY MFA.

I would say I’m a bit surprised that I haven’t read 1984 before now, but I was a bit of an imbecile in high school and resisted reading a number of books that I was told to read. Yet somehow I became an English major? I don’t know. I want to go back and punch myself in the face sometimes. But I digress.

We’re here to talk about George Orwell’s 1984. The novel has certainly come into the fore in recent years, with the rise of alternative facts, the tendency to discredit journalists, and many attempts to rewrite history by censoring the parts of it that are uncomfortable. Rather than focusing on the plot of the book and its connections with the present, which I feel has been thoroughly discussed, I want to talk about art and ideas and what this book has to say about them.

Why a graphic novel?

I was pleasantly surprised to discover that there was a graphic novel version. In my younger, snobbier days, I would have scoffed at the notion. I remember that scene from Major League, where the baseball players are reading the classics…in comic book form. The punchline is supposed to be that they can only comprehend the concepts if there are pictures.

But I now feel like graphic novels have a way of enhancing the story, while also, yes, making it more accessible. This artist, Fido Nesti, uses a simple palette of colors, lots of greys and browns, and occasionally blues and reds. This creates a visual starkness of how drab and uniform the totalitarian government has rendered the nation of Oceania. 

One of the things I love about reading is my mind’s ability to paint a picture. But having this visual component to my reading helps rein in that imagination. 

And that’s fully part of the point of Big Brother.

The importance of art

I’ve seen a lot of talk amongst writers that I know about why we should even be making art given the current climate. Isn’t there so much more we should be worrying about? Isn’t there something impactful we could be doing?

But those questions, I feel, miss the point of art. I began reading Make Your Art No Matter What by Beth Pickens this morning before sitting down to write this article. In her introduction, she hits on a couple of important points about art and its role in our lives. She says, “Artwork reflects the lived experience, imagination, and ideas of the artist,” then goes on to add, “I find artists furthering and transforming conversations, illuminating new ways to think, feel, connect, and live.”

To me, this means that art and life are inextricably intertwined. Through art, we ask questions, make statements, and engage with the world around us, including those who consume our art. And in order to make art, you also have to take in other artists’ work. Therefore, it’s a full-fledged conversation.

Art is also important because it creates a record of some sort. It depicts current events as interpreted by the individual artist. This makes art inherently subversive because it frequently seeks to challenge the status quo in some way.

How does this relate to 1984?

The novel begins with the defiant act of Winston Smith, the protagonist, putting pen to paper. The very act of putting words on the page forced him to craft a narrative version of current events and past recollections, which may well deviate from the official party line. As you read further, you learn that the party line changes as events unfold and Winston is tasked with correcting written accounts to match these changes in narrative. The government also controls so-called artistic output, dictating the storylines of novels, not just controlling the news and history.

And this is where the importance of art comes in. With art, there is the artist and the medium. There is no entity dictating what the art must look, feel, or sound like. This freedom and ability to express ourselves through our chosen medium is important and priceless. 

So, with all of this in mind, please continue making your art. It really is important. Art has the ability to reach other people and impact their lives. But it is also important on the personal level as a way of engaging with the world around you and giving you an outlet to tell your own story. It matters.

Tell us in the comments: Have you read 1984 by George Orwell? What did you think about how it relates to the importance of making art?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: 1984 by George Orwell appeared first on DIY MFA.

I have long been interested in banned books and have found the banning of books to be problematic. Any time “they” started telling “us” to not read a particular book, I just had to read it. This rebelliousness felt subversive when I was a teenager buying The Golden Compass series because my parents’ church came out against it. But it has grown into a desire to dig deeper, to read these books to figure out why they’re inventing excuses to have them banned.

This changed my thinking about this column. I don’t need to spend my time writing posts that promote the work of current and recent bestselling authors who really don’t need further promotion from me. Their books are good. Their books are available. Read them if you are interested, or don’t.

Instead, I am going to use this column to focus on commonly banned books and discuss why that banning is problematic. I’ll go into some of the commonly invented reasons for the book being banned, then I’ll discuss the larger implications. Some of these books will be re-reads, like the one I have planned for next month, and some will be new to me, like Maus today.

About Maus

Art Spiegelman’s graphic novel recounts his father’s survival of the Holocaust and has a frame depicting his relationship with his father as an adult. Both tales are gut-wrenching and heartbreaking. The tale of surviving the Holocaust is full of hiding and narrow escapes, close calls with death, not being sure whom to trust and for how long. The tale of the aging father speaks to anybody who has dealt with an aging parent or grandparent—the arguments, the confusion, the belligerent behavior—but it’s told against the backdrop of this unspeakable history that creates so many additional layers of nuance.

The genius of the tale is depicting the Jews as mice and the Nazis as cats. There are also dogs and frogs. This choice plays on common depictions of different groups as different animals. But it also takes the reader out of the factual history enough to grasp the story better by seeing the events unfold with animals instead of humans. 

Banning Maus

Maus was ostensibly banned because of profanity and nudity. After reading both volumes in a day, the profanity can readily be heard on primetime network TV. The one time the author meant a word stronger than that, he used symbols (ie $^&*@!) in lieu of letters. 

As for the nudity, in the first place, mice are already nude. They typically don’t wear pants or any clothes at all when you see them out in the wild. But also, it wasn’t sexual nudity. Rather, the nudity depicted the moment the Nazis took the clothes from the Jewish people in order to sanitize them, but also to dehumanize them. Nor was the nudity gratuitous. There were just a handful of panels with black and white line drawings of male mice with genitalia.

Why We Need to Read Maus

It is no secret that antisemitic acts of violence and destruction are on the rise in the United States and throughout the world. Survivors of the Holocaust are not going to be around much longer to tell their stories. These firsthand accounts are invaluable for understanding history and hopefully keeping it from happening again, for proving the strength of the human spirit in the face of unimaginable conditions and unspeakable acts.

General Eisenhower ensured the liberating armies took photographs of the horrors of the concentration camps as evidence that they actually happened. This was partly to collect evidence for what eventually became the Nuremberg Trials. But also, he had the foresight to see a time when people would deny this even happened. So too, with these firsthand accounts of the Holocaust—they keep history from being wiped away.

The outcry against the banning of Maus has been enormous. I was fortunate enough to procure a copy so that I could read it before they flew from the shelves. A local bookstore partnered with a local synagogue to give people in Tulsa free copies of the books to ensure people have the opportunity to read this important work. Hopefully, there are other such local efforts.

Tell us in the comments: Have you read Maus? What did you learn from it?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post The Book Nook: Maus by Art Spiegelman appeared first on DIY MFA.

I’ve gone through my shelves and selected twelve books that I have had for quite a while that, for various reasons, I want to have read by now, but just haven’t. Some are older releases, some are newer ones. Some I have never picked up and some I have read a chunk of. Throughout the year, I am going to finally finish them and I’ll use this column to report back.

Why now? Well, January seemed like a good time to mix things up with this column, just like it’s a good time to mix up anything.

The Reading Challenge Books:

1. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
2. Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain
3. Imaginary Friend by Stephen Chbosky
4. Bad Feminist by Roxane Gay
5. Howl by Allen Ginsberg
6. Killers of the Flower Moon by David Grann
7. Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott
8. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing
9. The Affairs of the Falcons by Melissa Rivero
10. Swing Time by Zadie Smith
11. Yoga for a World Out of Balance by Michael Stone
12. A Gentleman in Moscow by Amor Towles

A note about the order: These are listed alphabetically because in my opinion there is nothing more fair than the alphabet. I’ll read them in whatever order strikes my fancy.

Why These Books?

Each book in this reading challenge has its own personal reason for being on the list. I’ll run through a couple right now. Killers of the Flower Moon? They shot the film in the next town over from where I live and I want to read it before the movie comes out. Swing Time? I love Zadie Smith, but sometimes her writing makes me feel dumb, so it’s a good challenge for me. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings? I am ashamed that I didn’t read this book back in high school and I need to rectify that. Kitchen Confidential? I love food and cooking and started this one last year and it was pretty badass, so I want to finish.

As I finish these books, I’ll explain the personal reasons for reading them.

Make It Personal

That brings me to my next point about reading.

Reading is such a personal thing. We approach books for our own reasons, with our own thoughts, feelings, and histories. And we set books down the same way—individually. Hopefully the process of reading a particular book leaves us changed in some way, but still the experience of reaching The End is a unique proposition.

I’ll give an example. I read Catch-22 in high school. I loved it. I thought it was hilarious. I loved the logic or lack thereof. I know some people get frustrated with that one because it jumps around. Like with many books I love, I shoved it in my dad’s face and he read it. His verdict? Well, he couldn’t get past the profanity. (Cue major eye roll from 17 year old me.)

But that really illustrates my point. People bring their own stuff to each book they pick up, which makes it a unique and personal experience. No two experiences are alike. And I think that’s beautiful.

DIY Your Own Reading Challenge

I’m (gently) challenging you to look at your shelves and find 12 books that have been hanging around for a long time. You bought them at some point. Now is the time to remember why.

If you’re anything like me, there will be an additional challenge with this reading challenge. As soon as I “have” to read a book, I struggle to do it. I avoid it. But I’m hoping for a little social accountability here.

Tell us in the comments below: What books are part of your reading challenge for this year?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook: The Reading Challenge appeared first on DIY MFA.

If I’m not reading, I have to listen to whatever drivel is on the TV at night.

Even when I experienced bouts of insomnia, I couldn’t really focus on what I picked up to get me through the night.

I feel like I might be making a slight comeback since work is starting to slow down for the rest of the year. Fingers crossed because I’m about to go stir crazy!

C’est la vie.

The December Books

A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris

I finished this one and it was amazing. And I felt a little sad at the end. This collection takes us through 2020, meaning it’s going to be quite a while before Sedaris accumulates enough diary entries for another volume. That said, I saw he has a new collection coming out in May 2022. Yes, I already pre-ordered it.

Conversations with Friends by Sally Rooney

The thing I like about Sally Rooney is that her writing is smart but fun. A lot of times when I read “smart” writing, I feel dumb because the books are a slog to get through. Not here. It’s like a huge gab-fest with your best friend, where you talk about intellectual, important things, and in the next sentence, you talk about sex, pop culture, or whatever.

I didn’t finish this one because it didn’t quite fit with my mood, but I definitely can’t wait to get back to it.

The Rules of Civility by Amor Towles

Like I said last month, I really wanted to re-read this one after reading Towles’s newest book. I had forgotten how much I love this story and the writing in it! This one takes you through New York City in the late 1930s and it is just exquisite. A working-class girl finds herself rubbing elbows with the upper class. 

Again, I set it aside, but I can’t wait to go back to it. (I’m noticing a theme here…)

Heartburn by Nora Ephron

I re-read this one in a day. Once upon a time, Nora Ephron was married to Carl Bernstein and their marriage totally crashed and burned. Then she wrote a hilarious novel about it. Revenge might just be a dish best served by Nora Ephron.

I love how she took a painful experience and rendered it in a humorous way. It definitely got my wheels spinning about a novel I’d like to write.

The Fran Lebowitz Reader

This past month I wanted to laugh and read smart things (which maybe wasn’t the best impulse to follow because my concentration was nonexistent). This volume pairs two collections written by Lebowitz. Her pieces are short, funny satires that are definitely a style to aspire to.

I also love that she is a notoriously slow writer. It gives me hope.

Amy and Roger’s Epic Detour by Morgan Matson

As I was trying to make progress on a project for NaNoWriMo, I was reviewing Save the Cat Writes a Novel, which gives examples of the different types of novels. I was looking at road trip novels and this was a suggestion. I don’t typically go for YA, but this sounded like a lot of fun.

Amy has just gone through a family tragedy and has to make her way across the country where her mom has taken a new job. She doesn’t want to be in a car, let alone drive. So her mom finds a friend’s son who needs to get across the country as well to drive with her. The route is planned out, but they decide to go on an adventure instead. 

I definitely want to get back to this one because it’s just cool. Also, I get the sense that there’s more going on than we’re told, so I want to get to the bottom of it.

The Bone Spindle by Leslie Vedder

One of the new perks of my job is getting to read for work! I got access to an arc of this one for an upcoming episode of the podcast and was thrilled to sit down and read it. I haven’t finished yet, but I think this one is going to be a blast and that you should definitely keep an eye out for its release next month.

The Bone Spindle is a retelling of Sleeping Beauty with some Indiana Jones thrown in. Oh, and Vedder flipped the genders of the main characters. I am super excited to read about how the female rescues the male. And it’s a great buddy tale of the treasure hunter and the bookish historian. This is absolutely the type of book I hope we’ll see more of in the future.

The sad part of all of this is that I am certain I started more books, but I just can’t remember what they were! That said, I know I didn’t finish more than I did. Here’s hoping next month goes better. I should probably focus on finishing all of these half-read books.

Total Books Read in 2021: 36

Tell me in the comments below: What’s on your TBR for December?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook — December Edition appeared first on DIY MFA.

This fall has been really disappointing for me in terms of the amount of time I’ve been able to spend reading. Far too often, I have been spending my evenings and weekends sitting comatose on the couch instead of ingesting wonderful words. And I truly hate that, because that feels like so much time wasted, but I simply have not had the mental bandwidth to read. I’m hoping to turn a corner and finish out the year strong.

Anyway, without further ado…

The November Books

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

Wow! I pre-ordered this book on my Kindle because I knew I would be out of town on its pub day and I didn’t want to wait to get started reading this one. Amor Towles has the gift of bringing an everyday scene truly to life. He does this amazingly in The Rules of Civility and in A Gentleman in Moscow (which I’ve started and read most of but haven’t finished yet). In fact, The Lincoln Highway made me decide to start rereading The Rules of Civility so that I could savor the world a bit more.

This was a great road trip novel, and he does an amazing job of writing multiple voices that actually sound distinct. It starts off with the simple premise of a boy being released from a juvenile facility in the 1950s after his father passed and morphs into this brilliant journey. I think some of my favorite sections featured characters whose voices we only heard once or twice. 

Highly recommend it!

A Carnival of Snackery by David Sedaris

I pre-ordered this book close to a year ago, as soon as it was announced (at least I think it was close to a year ago—it’s been a while is what I’m getting at). Sedaris is an auto-purchase for me. I know I don’t need to extol his talent because I’m pretty sure I’ve already done that a time or two in this column.

I love reading his diaries. It’s really cool from a craft perspective to be able to see the evolution of one of his essays from a mention in his diary to a piece in a book or in The New Yorker. I don’t know how so many crazy things happen to him, but it’s highly entertaining reading. (I’d also venture to guess that at this point, people go out of their way to “earn” a mention in one of his pieces.)

Unfortunately, this collection takes us to 2020, so it’s going to be another 15+ years before we are likely to get another collection of Sedaris diaries.

I’m still reading it because I don’t want it to end.

Beautiful World, Where Are You by Sally Rooney

I had never read anything by Sally Rooney before. I’d heard tons, of course, about how she’s currently the frontrunner as the voice of Millennial literature. I can see it. As I read this one, I saw a lot of myself and my best friend. We talk about high-level stuff, then veer into vapid and silly topics. We struggle with a lot of the same questions about caring about the future and our ability to effect change.

Reading this prompted me to get her other books to see what else she has to say that speaks to me. I haven’t read them yet, but I can definitely relate to her characters and their disillusionment.

Fleabag by Phoebe Waller-Bridge

This was another wow book for me. It’s the text of the one-woman show written and performed by Waller-Bridge that became a smash TV show that I haven’t seen. I would love to see Waller-Bridge perform this herself (and perhaps that’s available on the internet; I haven’t looked yet).

I loved the gritty tone and attitude of this text. It was a perfect amount of rawness without being over the top, in your face, ugly to be ugly quality that I really find off-putting. My next assignment, yes, is to watch the show and read Fleabag: Collected Scriptures, which is the shooting scripts of the first season (or first two seasons?) of the show.

That’s it for November. Just four books to mention. I started a few others but didn’t read enough to warrant mention in this column. And I’ll be honest, next month isn’t looking great so far either, but we’ll see.

Total Books Read in 2021: 34

Tell me in the comments below: What’s on your TBR for November?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook — November Edition appeared first on DIY MFA.

It wasn’t a great month for me reading-wise. I started off strong, but fell into quite a rut. I did finish kind of strong though, with two that I read quickly in a bout of insomnia. If the last couple of months had a bit of a theme, this month did not. I am all over the place. I’ll just blame that on work.

But as always, I keep reading. Here we are…

The October Books

The Devil Wears Prada by Lauren Weisburger

This was my great start! I read the whole thing in about two or three days. I read it a million years ago, back in high school, but came back to it for reasons unknown. I am glad I did though. This was a lot of fun to read. I knee-jerk bought the other two books in the series as well. I am looking forward to reading them at some point.

I love books that are fun and take me on a ride. I think everyone knows about Andy Sachs and her nightmare of a boss by now. Because of my job, I could relate to certain aspects of the job (like sending emails saying “My boss needs this yesterday!”) while others just seemed crazy and I don’t know how Andy put up with it for as long as she did.

The Wrong Way to Save Your Life by Megan Stielstra

Wow. This collection is amazing. I haven’t finished it yet. I am savoring it. Each piece is a great little morsel of amazingness. I first heard about Stielstra on Instagram and on a whim bought this collection. I am so glad I did. I’ve read so many essay collections over the years that it is rare I stumble across somebody new and different. What a gem!

Stielstra does an amazing job of exploring and dissecting the female experience in 21st century America. The good, the bad, and the ugly. I feel like she is a braver version of me and who I wish I would have been. (Though, I guess it’s not too late, right?) Anyway, highly recommend!

The Royal We by Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan

This is another insomnia read for me. It’s a book I can just fall into when I can’t sleep that will help me ride the wave of non-sleep (as in, it entertains me and doesn’t just put me to sleep). This is a really interesting imagining of what would happen if the heir to the throne fell in love with an American. It’s about Bex who has to navigate dating the future king, convince his family that she’s all right, and a whole lotta drama.

I’m only about one-third of the way through, but it feels like a ton has happened and I cannot even begin to imagine the twists and turns to come in the remaining nearly 400 pages. The authors really move the pacing well. It could be easy to get bogged down, but nope. Things keep moving along. I’m kind of looking forward to another extended period of insomnia so I can keep reading.

Beautiful World, Where Are You? By Sally Rooney

I pre-ordered this one because it sounded really interesting. Like many millennials, I love reading about the millennial experience. There’s just something comforting in reading about characters who are similarly screwed up.

Every other chapter is an email exchange between the two main characters, who are best friends. They capture that ability to talk about nothing and everything in a single correspondence. It reminds me of the text chain between my best friend and I. Even though I haven’t finished yet, I am really enjoying this one.

Enola Holmes and the Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer

I’ve had this on my Kindle for quite a while, but reading Sara Farmer’s recent post on Modern Girl Detectives, I just had to start reading it. This series is for children (I don’t know all of the various terms for types of children’s books, but it’s for ages 8 and up) that features Enola Holmes, much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft. She finds herself alone in London, solving mysteries like her older brother. I love this concept. Very girl-power.

This was a perfect insomnia read. I stayed up until 6 to finish it and was able to fall asleep happy, knowing that Enola was on the hunt for the next case…

Enola Holmes and the Left-Handed Lady by Nancy Springer

Which brings me to Enola’s next case. Being a left-handed person, I was a bit intrigued by the title. Then I started reading all of the really not nice things 19th-century people believed about left-handed people. I know that historically, we’ve been thought to be evil and had the left-handedness beaten or trained out of us, but this was the first time I really read about it. I must say, it hurt my feelings a bit.

But I am HOOKED on the series! I ordered the next two books to accompany me on vacation. I wish I had bought them on my Kindle for insomnia, but note to self for books 5, 6, and beyond! Seriously, kudos to Nancy Springer for coming up with such an interesting and entertaining concept. And please write more.

There you go. My October books. 

Total Books Read in 2021: 31

Tell me in the comments below: What’s on your TBR for October?

Lori Walker is the Operations Maven at DIY MFA. Though she’s fallen off the wagon as a writer, she’s hoping to return to writing essays (perhaps even a novel!) through her involvement with DIY MFA. She is also Launch Manager, Web Editor, and Podcast Producer for DIY MFA and a Book Coach. She resides in Smalltown, Oklahoma, with her husband and their cat, Joan Didion. You can follow her on Instagram at @LoriTheWriter.

The post Book Nook — October Edition appeared first on DIY MFA.