Vinyl wall art is the rage, so in my office, I have the broadside of my bookcase emblazoned in red vinyl letters with the addage, You Are What You Think.
Thoughts do create personal reality, not in a healy-feely sense, (I think I'm a millionaire, so therefore I am!), but in how one perceives their environment, circumstances, through thier own filter. Literature is a reflection of the human condition, so regardless of whether you read the sports pages, pulp novel, or an ancient epic, reading broadens and stretches the filter through which you see your world. I like to think I can appropriate the beauty and intelligence from the books I read. Also, that the ideas and images presented become part of the fabric of my thoughts.
When I'm working out a character, figuring out the underbelly, the shadow, the essence of the person, I usually create a library for them so that I can understand who they are by what they've read, aspired to read, or just plain have on their coffee table so they appear wicked smart and hip.
Here are the new books I plan to read, and to misquote Billy Collins: drop another stone into the aquarium:
Say You're One of Them - Uwem Akpan
The Vision of Emma Blau - Ursela Hegi
Little Shifts - Suzanne Beth Stinnett
Kiffe Kiffe Tomorrow - Faiza Guere
The Sound of Paper - Julia Cameron
The Power of Now - Eckhart Tolle
The Quest for Peace, Love, and a 24" Waist - Deborah Low
The Lost Highway: Journeys and Arrivals of American Musicians - Peter Guralnick
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