growing as a writer & reader

i feel doofy saying it, but i say i'm a "writer". i think in linguistics. my inner monologue includes punctuation. it's a problem.

i minored in creative writing in college, which was perfect for me. i learned so much about the type of writer i am, the type of writer i'm certainly not, and how all of that is actually really ok. in the process, i read a lot of books - poetry, fiction, non-fiction. i'm talking multiple books a week. pretty soon reading on my own time started to sound like a joke. between creative writing reading assignments and reading for other classes, sitting down with a book at the end of the day for leisure was unheard of. i was kinda over books.

it's been almost a year since i graduated. i have not read a single book. i've flipped through a few issue of glamour and instyle, but nope, not a single book in there. i bought myself an ipad for christmas with the intention of reading things on it. well, here i am, in march, and i don't think i've opened the ibooks app.

growing as a writer means growing as a reader. in my years of reading other work, i was taught to admire styles that simply didn't piece themselves together in my mind, that being a 'minimalist' writer was a thing and i wasn't just boring. to keep growing as a writer, i need to grow as a person - and i feel reading facilitates both.

give me your suggestions! what's on your "to read" list for 2014? so far, i've downloaded sheryl sandberg's "lean in", as well as a cheesy singles self help book that is just too ridiculous to name. i've been out of the book game for a while y'all. fill me in!