Sunday, December 27, 2015

DIY MFA #2 :Reading List

In 2016, I'm going to be doing a lot of posts on things I've taken away from my MFA that you can do on your own to improve your writing.

Because Hana asked today I'm giving you a reading list. One thing all MFAs have in common is a substantial amount of reading. Last week, I mentioned Lady X was this session's residency read and said I didn't know why because to me it didn't have cross genre appeal. Hana wanted to know what else we're reading for the MFA. 

Now let me start off by saying my focus is romance. I'll list the classics first, because you're likely to find use in these whether you write romance or not. If I were studying another genre I'd likely have a different list, but here's what I will have worked on from June of last year to June of this year:

Classics
Pride and Prejudice
Framely Parsonage
Jane Eyre
Nine Coaches Waiting
Our final project for classics RIG (reading in the genre) will be to find a book of our choice we will believe will become a classic. We are not supposed to select this book until mid semester but I'm leaning toward Twilight because 1)it's my favorite book, but 2)it's half way there. It needs to stay in print for twenty years to be a classic and Twilight has been in print for ten years.

Subgenres of Romance
The Liar-Nora Roberts
The Saint-Tiffany Reisz (seriously erotica; not recommended for fans of sweet/clean romance)
Destiny's Embrace-Beverly Jenkins
Outlander-Diana Gabaldon (genre mash-up, but we like to study how elements of another genre can add to our readership)
Flowers From the Storm-Laura Kinsale (my personal favorite)
Grave Danger-Katy Lee
contemporary book of choice. (I chose Beastly which was a re-read for me.)
 

1 comment:

  1. I haven't read Jane Eyre since eleventh grade, so it's been a few years. ;)

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