Thankfully Reading Weekend starts

Today is the official start of the Thankfully Reading Weekend. I started my reading yesterday with a collection of short stories, Love Stories in This Town by Amanda Eyre Ward. Between cooking yesterday and spending time with the family, I also started The Mercy Papers: A Memoir of Three Weeks by Robin Romm. Romm chronicles the three weeks leading up to her mother’s death from cancer. It’s a sad but engaging read. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck is another book that was started a few days ago. It was Dewey’s favorite books of all time. Steinbeck is one of my favorite authors so I’m reading it to honor her memory.

I have a ton of books on my shelves that I would love to read this weekend like Liar by Justin Larbalestier and Flygirl by Sherri L. Smith. I’m hoping to finish at least three or four books this weekend.

What are you reading this weekend? Are you participating in Thankfully Reading Weekend?

How did I sign up for more challenges?

So remember that last post I did about 2010 reading challenges? Well after that post a lot of bloggers decided they were going to start their own challenges and guess what? I signed up! Yay! Before I talk about the newest challenges I’ve joined, let’s talk about the reading lists. WARNING: this post is long but hopefully entertaining.

Bibliofreak has made a new blog dedicated to her World Religion Challenge that starts next year. I’ve signed up for the Universalist path, so I’m reading as many books as I can about as many spiritual paths as I want. My list:

Hinduism
Hinduism: A Beginner’s Guide by Klaus K. Klostermaier
My Family and Other Saints by Kirin  Narayan
Essential Hinduism – Steven Rosen

Judaism
The Talmud and the Internet – Jonathon Rosen
Finding God in the Garden – Balfour Brickner
Living Judaism – Wayne Dosick

Religious Society of Friends (Quakers)
Holy Silence: The Gift of Quaker Spirituality – J. Brett Bill
Quaker Spirituality: Selected Writings
Plain Living: A Quaker Path to Simplicity – Catherine Whitmire

 

Islam
No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam- Reza Aslan

Wicca
The Pagan Book of Living and Dying - Starhawk

Buddhism
Razor-Wire Dharma: A Buddhist Life in Prison – Calvin Malone (memoir)

Unitarianism Universalism
The A to Z of Unitarian Universalism – Mark W. Harris

Mythology
Don’t Know Much about Mythology – Kenneth C. Davis

Christianity
Easter Everywhere – Darcey Steinke (memoir)
Traveling Mercies – Anne Lamott (re-read/memoir)

Shinto
A Year in the Life of a Shinto Shrine – John K. Nelson

Sufism
The Gift – Hafiz (poetry)
Sufism: A Beginner’s Guide – William C. Chittick

Comparative Religion/Spirituality
God: stories edited by C. Michael Curtis
Best American Spiritual Writing (various years)
The Life of Meaning: Reflections on Faith, Doubt, and Repairing the World edited by  Bob Abernathy

 

I also signed up for the GLBT reading challenge hosted by Amanda from The Zen Leaf. I’m planning to read at least four books. Some of the authors I’m looking forward to reading are:

Sara Teasdale
Langston Hughes
W.H. Auden
Dorothy Allison
John Cheever
Patricia Highsmith
Tennessee Williams
Jeanette Winterson
Rita Mae Brown
Edna St. Vincent-Millay
Ellis Avery
Audre Lorde
Sarah Waters

Aarti over at Book Lust is hosting the Flashback Challenge! I cannot wait to start this re-read challenge. I’m signing up for the Literari level, which is to re-read six books. I have a ton of books on my shelves that I would love to get to, so I’m hoping to re-read more than six.

The TwentyTen challenge hosted by Darren over at Bart’s Bookshelves. Participants are to read two books from ten categories for a total of twenty books.  The ten categories: young adult, tbr, shiny and new, bad bloggers, charity, new in 2010, older than you, and who are you again?. For the last category particpants choose the theme and I’m going with prize-winning books.

The brilliant Lu over at Regular Ruminations is hosting the VPR challenge. It’s a poetry challenge. I don’t read poetry as much as I want to outside of school, so I’ve signed up. I plan on reading at least two volumes of poetry.

Okay. So those are the rest of the challenges I’m signed up for in 2010. Have you added any more challenges to your list for next year?

The Creative Habit by Twyla Tharp

The Creative Habit: Learn it and use it for life (2003)
Twyla Tharp
245 pages

I read The Creative Habit a few weeks ago and have been meaning to write something about this wonderful book.

I usually don’t read books about creativity and creative thinking. I prefer to read about the writing and reading experiences of others, but after reading about this book on another blog, I wanted to give it a try. Being a mom and a student, I sometimes feel like I need something different in my life. The Creative Habit gave me many ideas to use in not just my everyday life, but also when I blog.

The Creative Habit is choreographer Tharp’s manifesto on creativity. Divided into twelve chapters, each chapter deals with a different aspect of creativity and ends with exercises the author suggests readers use. Her topics range from finding a ritual to the different types of memory, from what a good idea looks like to being in a rut and failures. This isn’t a book designed just for artists but for everyone. One of the most surprising things I read is when Tharp talks about creativity being a habit, a discipline.

Turning something into a ritual eliminates the question, Why am I doing this? . . .The ritual erases the question of whether or not I like it. It’s also a friendly reminder I’m doing the right thing. (I’ve done it before. It was good. I’ll do it again.) We all have rituals in our day, whether we’re aware of them or not.

It made me realize that one of my morning rituals is to make a pot of coffee before I do anything else. Once it’s made I can sit down and do what is that’s needed for the day. Making a pot of coffee is my start to conquering the world around me.

I also noticed that throughout the book Tharp stresses that what works for one person may not work for another. There were exercises and suggestions that I took notes on and many that I didn’t bother with. I was talking about this book on Twitter with a fellow blogger when she stated that the number of physical exercises turned her off. I thought about that. There are exercises that involve the physical movement of the body. I’m not really a physical person though I understand that as a former dancer Tharp is. So those exercises I wasn’t really looking at.

My favorite chapter is definitely the chapter on “scratching”.

You can’t just dance or paint or write or sculpt. Those are just verbs. You need a tangible idea to get you going. The idea, however minuscule, is what turns the verb into a noun-paint into a painting, sculpt into sculpture, write into writing, dance into a dance.

Don’t you just love that? Scratching is a way of finding ideas to fuel your creativity. You can scratch by going through books or visiting different stores, by taking a walk, having a conversation, or traveling. Included in the chapter is tips to keep generating new ideas.

One of my favorite exercises from the book is entitled “reading archaelogically”. In the exercise, Tharp writes why she reads and various ways she read. One example is her suggestion to readers to conduct their own reading dig. A reading dig is when you take an author or subject and starting with the most recent of texts, read your way backwards to older texts. Along the way you take note of recurring themes and style, learning as you go.

Overall I had a great time reading this book. It gave me a lot of ideas when it comes to blogging and I’m glad I read it. Highly recommended.