A while ago, in the inaugural post of my irregular blog, I said I wanted to talk about reading and writing while at Gullkistan, an artist residency in Laugarvatn, Iceland. Gullkistan is the third residency I’ve attended, so I had a routine in mind for the time I’d spend in Iceland. I knew that I couldn’t spend all my time writing, so I planned on exploring the country (of course; it’s a small country so you can cover a lot of ground) and doing a lot of reading.
Books are heavy and bulky, so I didn’t want to bring a lot of books with me. Most residencies have extensive libraries, so I knew there would be books there to read, so I only brought along three:
- The Nickle Boys by Colson Whitehead, which was thrilling enough to keep me anticipating the next page. I read some of it on the plane on the way to the residency and some of it while there. I had a paperback copy which I had planned on donating to the residency or elsewhere, so I could have room to bring a new book back. This is a trick I learned from my mom-in-law.
- MEM by Bethany C. Morrow, published by Unnamed Press. A beautiful and dreamy scifi slipstream novel about what it means to be human and what our memories mean to us.
