{"id":94,"date":"2016-10-24T06:28:31","date_gmt":"2016-10-24T06:28:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/?p=94"},"modified":"2016-10-24T06:28:31","modified_gmt":"2016-10-24T06:28:31","slug":"the-readings-of-my-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/?p=94","title":{"rendered":"The Readings of My Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I used to organize my books autobiographically: in this way I could see how I went from The World According to Garp<\/em> (the oldest book in my current personal library \u2014few books survived the purge of my first personal library [made up of comic books, and books by Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Irving \u2014most of my reading came from the public library and the school library, so though the Wizard of Earthsea<\/em> was one of my faves, it didn’t enter my library until years later, the same goes for Dune<\/em>, The Catcher in the Rye<\/em>, and many novels by Agatha Christie]\u2014, a purge that was brought about my move away from home at 18) through Chronicle of a Death Foretold to Unbearable Lightness of Being, Bright Lights, Big City<\/em>, and Slaves of New York<\/em> (these last two from my artsy undergrad phase where I spent my time either in the painting studio trying to become a painter, or at the radio station where I was constructing the soundtrack of my life), to Pedro P\u00e1ramo, Confabulario, Hasta no verte, Jes\u00fas m\u00edo<\/em>, and Alb\u00fam de familia<\/em> (from the time when I was living in Mexico City, painting outside on the rooftop of the house where I was living, riding the metro to a soundtrack of Depeche Mode, Cure, and Pixies \u2014thanks to care packages of tapes sent by friends from California\u2014 and reading Mexican literature in caf\u00e9’s and parks) to …y no se lo trag\u00f3 la tierra, Bless Me, \u00daltima, Maitreya, Las novelas ejemplares, Nazar\u00edn, If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler, Oficio de tinieblas, The Name of the Rose, House on Mango Street and Woman Hollering Creek<\/em> (my early years of living in Santa Barbara, reading through the MA list and diving first into Chicano\/a and European literature), to El mundo es un lugar extra\u00f1o, Registro de causantes, De alba sombr\u00eda, Tijuanenses, El agente secreto, La luna siempre ser\u00e1 un amor dif\u00edcil, <\/em>to Callej\u00f3n sucre<\/em> (the period as I was getting more into literatura norte\u00f1a and gearing up for writing my dissertation) to Drown, City of Glass, Por favor, rebobinar, El delirio de Turing, Sue\u00f1os digitales, Estampas del valle, Can\u00edcula, The Sheltering Sky, A hora da estrela<\/em>, and Revolutionary Road<\/em> (the period, post-dissertation when I decided I was going to be a scholar and rediscovered creative writing instead, and my marriage went to hell), to Take the Canoli, On the Road, the Global Soul, Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, Loveship, Marriage, the Feast of Love, Llamadas telef\u00f3nicas, Abril rojo, The Brief, Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao<\/em>, to The Hours<\/em> (marking the period of travel after my divorce), to Around the Bloc, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe, A Poetry of Remembrance, the Book of Unknown Americans, Lord Fear, Wandering Time<\/em>, and, most recently, Notes on the Assemblage<\/em>. How does one go from John Irving to Juan Felipe Herrera? My formerly autobiographically organized personal library showed me a way.<\/p>\n

My books have been out of order for a long time, but I am slowly reorganizing them. Not in autobiographical order \u2014did I read Alice Munro before Jayne Anne Phillips? Or was it after?\u2014 and not alphabetically. Right now they are in groupings by author, so my books by David Foster Wallace are beside a collection of stories by Rubem Fonseca, my books by Elena Poniatowska are beside Paul Auster, and Italo Calvino is near Jorge Ibarg\u00fcengotia. The groupings are arbitrary, but someday they may fall into order.<\/p>\n

Currently, my library is an assemblage of the readings of my life.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I used to organize my books autobiographically: in this way I could see how I went from The World According to Garp (the oldest book in my current personal library \u2014few books survived the purge of my first personal library [made up of comic books, and books by Stephen King, Kurt Vonnegut, and John Irving … Continue reading The Readings of My Life<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-94","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=94"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":95,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/94\/revisions\/95"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=94"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=94"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/vaqueravasquez.com\/dir\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=94"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}