Suffice it to say, I'm a 32 year old mother of four daughters who's spent more time reading and scribbling than anything else. I've been a SAHM for the last 14 or so years, and now that my baby's going off to kindergarten, it's time to venture out of the cave. This blog was created to force me to write more, to get me to read not just for escapism, to but to learn the craft of novel writing.
Aside from my lit ambitions, both reading and writing, I'm a feminist. I talk a lot about that gender, sexism, and societal double standards here at Lit Endeavors. That I'm a mother to all daughters is a responsibility I take seriously, and I approach it with the gravity and vigilance of politics. Yes, I can be that crazy mom who bans listening to Rihanna or at least pausing the music video to explain how they objectify women. My kids like to roll their eyes and laugh at me, but I hope they carry my voice around in their heads, anyway. I call myself a lazy feminist because I feel guilty for having being a SAHM all these years; I should have been picketing or shattering glass ceilings, or at least reading more Virginia Woolf. I always felt the contradictions between how I lived and what I believed were far too many to carry the badge of feminism without some sense of irony. But still, I like to call myself a Feminazi.
My reading habits vary wildly from season to season. Last year, I went through a phase where I read classics back to back for a few months. Then I went through a mystery/suspense month, and then settled into literary fiction. Basically, I read what strikes my fancy. Literary fiction, crime, philosophy, poetry, drama, women's fiction, chicklit, horror, memoirs, biography, non-fiction....but my favorite are the classics and books about books. Sometimes I'll go a few months without reading a classic, as my concentration skills are that of a 13 year old girl...I go with my reading moods...life is too short to force yourself to do anything, or to conform to notions of what you think you should be doing at any particular time.
My favorite writers off the top of my head (I know I'll forget someone): Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Sylvia Plath, Anne Sexton, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Somerset Maugham, Stanley Kunitz, Robert Frost, Edwin Arlingston Robinson, Pablo Neruda, Saul Bellow, Adrienne Rich, Lord Byron, Stephen Crane, Umberto Eco, The Brontes, Gustave Flaubert, Tennessee Williams, Guy de Maupassant, Anne Tyler, Louise Erdich, and Sue Miller.
My favorite books of all time: Anna Karenina, Madame Bovary, Gone with the Wind, Dracula, Foucault's Pendulum, The End of the Affair, The Crack-Up, The Glass Menagerie, The Yellow Heart, Kunitz's Collected Poems...
To contact me, email me at litendeavors@gmail.com
