http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 200 Essays and Interviews to Help You Read and Write Memoirs Fri, 03 Sep 2010 14:38:44 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 2006-2007 jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) jerrywaxler@yahoo.com (Jerry Waxler) Self-help 1440 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/wp-content/plugins/podpress/images/LearnMemoirCoverFront-small.jpg http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog 144 144 Reading and writing memoirs. Record the Stories of Your Life, tips, how-to, memoir book reviews, by Jerry Waxler memoir, writers, self-help, book-reviews, essays Jerry Waxler Jerry Waxler jerrywaxler@yahoo.com no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/10-brief-memoir-reviews/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/10-brief-memoir-reviews/#comments Tue, 12 Jan 2010 12:44:17 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=696 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/10-brief-memoir-reviews/feed/ 7 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/annotated-list-memoirs/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/annotated-list-memoirs/#comments Fri, 23 Oct 2009 10:29:08 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=611 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/annotated-list-memoirs/feed/ 5 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/rediscovering-why-i-read-books-throughout-my-lifetime/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/rediscovering-why-i-read-books-throughout-my-lifetime/#comments Tue, 08 Apr 2008 09:57:56 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/rediscovering-why-i-read-books-throughout-my-lifetime/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/rediscovering-why-i-read-books-throughout-my-lifetime/feed/ 0 00:01:01 by Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Books ... by Jerry Waxler (You can listen to the podcast version by clicking the player control at the bottom of this post or download it from iTunes.) Books have always played an important role in my life, influencing, informing, and entertaining. Now I want to pass forward to others the benefits I have received. One of the steps of offering my thoughts to "the world" is to visualize who might be on the receiving end. Communication does, after all, require a speaker and a listener. So who are "those people" out there to whom I am speaking? One approach to understanding how books work for them is to explore how books have worked for me. By picking apart the way books have worked in my life, I hope to learn how other people use books. When I lay out my recollections on paper, patterns emerge, much simpler and more sensible than expected, letting me identify the way I used books differently in various eras of my life. Perhaps this fact should have been obvious to me from the start, but it wasn't and now once again, I find myself learning more about the changes across the lifespan by going back and reviewing my own. Different reasons for reading at different stages in life In early teen years, I fell into a torrid love affair with science fiction, a genre that let me suspend my own limitations, and join forces with people who adventured through the known and unknown universe. Regular trips to the library and a large paperback collection fed my passion for fantasy. Then in high school, I switched to more serious literature, like Charles Dickens and Alexander Dumas, basking in the hypnotic rhythm of their language and stories. It didn't bother me that they described a world that took place 100 years earlier. In fact, in one of my favorite books from that period, "Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," Mark Twain transported the protagonist back several hundred years, combining literature with science fiction. When I was twenty, I desperately wanted clever people to tell me what life was going to be like, so I ran towards the darkness of a culture driven mad by World War II. One of the most intellectually demanding books I ever read, "The One Dimensional Man" by Herbert Marcuse left me feeling that all was insanity and all was lost. Mentors like Samuel Beckett and Joseph Heller offered a cynical emptiness, so deep and despairing that by the time I stopped reading I had entered my own hell. Perhaps I was experiencing "Clinical Depression" or perhaps I had simply spent too much time absorbing post-World War II despair. Whatever it was, I had my fill of the dark. To regain some of the lightness required for survival, I reached towards spirituality, reading books by mystical authors who offered me insights into a reality that made more sense than the one I had constructed so far. One was Paramahansa Yogananda's Autobiography of a Yoga [See my essay on a memoir about Paramahansa Yogananda by clicking here.] There were many others. Rumi, the ancient Persian poet who continues to influence and uplift. Kahlil Gibran. The Book of Mirdad. The Way of the Pilgrim, about a Russian monk who learns the art of constant prayer. Some potent books, like Stewart White's "Betty Book" were recommended by a friend who had found them on dusty shelves of a used bookstore. (Ah-ha! It's not just bestselling books that influence a reader.) I finally got back on my feet, and as a young working man, I returned to mysteries. Their repetitive formula soothed me by unmasking the villain and reducing the chaos of the world. In my forties I discovered self-help books. During this period, authors taught me psychological skills to help me survive the working life, and improve my chances for aging gracefully. My foray into self-help reached a zenith in "Seven Habits of Highly Effective People" by Stephen Covey, whose ideas formed the foundation for going back to school for a Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology. I continued my fascination with Lifelong Learning, Writing Prompt, reading Jerry Waxler no no http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/showing-ideas-is-harder-than-telling-them/ http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/showing-ideas-is-harder-than-telling-them/#comments Thu, 05 Apr 2007 12:38:32 +0000 jerrywaxler http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/?p=15 http://memorywritersnetwork.com/blog/showing-ideas-is-harder-than-telling-them/feed/ 3