You're Damn Skippy, Son!

Yeah, that's right. I just finished the long-awaited second draft of my prospectus. And I think it's pretty good (a rare first response for me when I've just finished a writing project). I offer no details here, as I'm ready to just forget everything for a few days. But in celebration, I offer to the world this list of Books You Just Gotta Read If You Want To Feel the Place of the West:

Gaston Bachelard, The Poetics of Space
Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place
David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous
William Cronon, just about anything, but especially his article "A Place for Stories," and Under an Open Sky
Henry Nash Smith, Virgin Land (old school, baby!)
Walter Prescott Webb, The Great Plains (even older school!)
Willa Cather, My Antonia
Kent Haruf, Plainsong (just a great contemporary Western novel)
Leslie Marmon Silko, Ceremony
Terry Tempest Williams, Refuge

There are, of course, so many more (and even more bad ones), but I just plain dug these books and learned a lot from them. Let me know what you think.

Oh, yeah. And celebrate good times, come on.