Reading Room

Travel always seems to involve, require and invite piles of books into our lives about subjects we might otherwise never think to explore. Such was the case in NM, we ended up shipping boxes of books home (flat rate US Post a great deal). We also had wonderful conversations with people about books, reading and literary culture.To conserve those discussion and the many great recommendations that resulted, we're providing this page dedicated to the books and subjects that came alive for us in New Mexico.

There's an additional book list in the right-hand sidebar of the page. Everyone is encouraged to send links or titles for inclusion.

11/6
Our dear friend and N.M. host Ronald Christ has just been awarded the 2011 PEN Southwest Book Award, Special Prize for Translation of the book Soul’s Infarct, from the Spanish of Diamela Eltit and Paz Errázuriz. Join us in congratulating him and read across the linked texts to learn more about this moving and important work,

“Another splendid book by Diamela Eltit, Chile’s most celebrated experimental writer. In collaboration with renowned photographer Paz Errázuriz, Eltit questions the lovers’ discourse—how this magic is born, how it is sustained and nourished—and roots her perspective in those outcasts whom society has condemned to the margins. These abject figures, locked for life in a psychiatric institution for the poor and insane, are the protagonists of this beautiful book about love; they are the guardians of what Eltit describes as ‘that mysterious symbolic disorder’ which nothing in medical science can ever come close to explaining. ... Award-winning translator Ronald Christ is unique in his ability to tease out the subtle rhythms of Eltit’s text and bring to English-language readers the sublime poetic prose of Soul’s Infarct.”—Francine Masiello, University of California at Berkeley 

10/29 One of the first books I read in preparation for our October trip, was Craig Childs' House of Rain, Tracking a Vanished Civilization Across the American Southwest . The archeology of the ancient SW pueblo cultures and their intersections at Chaco and Mesa Verde come alive in these pages, as does Child's trekking across the desert, and down flooded arroyos in search of the places pueblo ancestors inhabited. Childs' voice is easy to listen to and unconventional in its storytelling.
Find out more about his work at the  http://author's website. Copies of this book should be readily available at your local library or through interlibrary loan.  You can consult the free listings at WORLDCAT and click through to find a library copy near you.

WORLDCAT's another rich resource that we'll be saying a lot more about in pages to come.