Reading

The Magic of Reading

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Inventor and writer Lin Yutang on the magic of reading:

“Compare the difference between the life of a man who does no reading and that of a man who does. The man who has not the habit of reading is imprisoned in his immediate world, in respect to time and space. His life falls into a set routine; he is limited to contact and conversation with a few friends and acquaintances, and he sees only what happens in his immediate neighborhood. From this prison there is no escape.

But the moment he takes up a book, he immediately enters a different world, and if it is a good book, he is immediately put in touch with one of the best talkers of the world. This talker leads him on and carries him into a different country or a different age, or unburdens to him some of his personal regrets, or discusses with him some special line or aspect of life that the reader knows nothing about. An ancient author puts him in communion with a dead spirit of long ago, and as he reads along, he begins to imagine what that ancient author looked like and what type of person he was…

Now to be able to live two hours out of twelve in a different world and take one’s thoughts off the claims of the immediate present is, of course, a privilege to be envied by people shut up in their bodily prison.”

Source: The Importance of Living

Reading a Lot

When you read a lot, authors come in and out of your field of vision. People you don’t think about for years, books you don’t touch, float into view, and you have to seek them out. I always think I forget what I have read, soon after I put the book down, but then many years later it comes back. A specific scene or character or setting or the whole thing. This weekend was

J G Ballard's picture

a flood. J.G. Ballard is always around somewhere–although I don’t need to read them all again right now, that world is too dark. Alasdair Gray died.

book cover of My Seditious Heart

Arundhati Roy came back–I’m looking at her new essay collection My Seditious Heart. She is someone who goes into what is happening in the world and looks hard at where we need to go. Terry Eagleton is back. It’s not hard to see the full shelf of his books, but his way of delving into a topic opens up the chance to see his point of view and to fight back. Neil Gaiman and Sandman was right up there over the weekend, as kept getting introduced as the Graphic Novel guy to adults and young people alike. Chris Ware is back–but that is because he has a new book, but also because I ran into a clean copy of Building Stories in the library sale.

Philip Pullman on Children’s Literature & the Critics Who Disdain It

Lit is lit books are books. We find certain books at certain times and they change us. Categories are for selling.

From Daemon Voices: On Stories and Storytelling by Philip Pullman. Used with permission of the publisher, Vintage Books. Copyright © 2017 by Philip Pullman.

https://lithub.com/philip-pullman-on-childrens-literature-and-the-critics-who-disdain-it/

Reading Literary Fiction Leads to Better Emotional Intelligence a Study Finds

Written by Melissa Dahl in The Cut

There’s that quote from To Kill a Mockingbird, that the best way to understand another person is to “climb into [their] skin and walk around in it.” This sounds a little Silence of the Lambs when taken out of context, so here is an alternate way of improving your capacity for empathy: Read more literary fiction.

Or so goes the argument recently put forth by a pair of researchers, who find that familiarity with literary fiction — in contrast to genre fiction (mystery, sci-fi, romance, and the like) — is associated with greater emotional intelligence. 

https://www.thecut.com/2016/08/to-improve-your-social-skills-read-better-books.html

My Year in Books

A list worth checking out.

Literary Mama

Here it is: the complete list of books I finished in 2017. A few caveats: I have a toddler, so both reading time and energy are in short supply; there are lots more books that I started, or read pieces of, or read excerpts of in magazines; current events were much more distracting this year than others. That being said, I’m proud of this list. I read some truly great books, and thanks to the Book Riot Read Harder Challenge (more on that next week), I read a much wider range of genres than I typically would.

The best of the best: Exit West by Mohsin Hamid and Sing, Unburied, Sing by Jesmyn Ward were the best novels I read this year, and One Hundred Twenty-One Days by Michèle Audin was the most unexpected. For nonfiction, I loved Code Girls by Liza Mundy and I savored How to Sit by…

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Reading in Print

by Kerry Lambeth (?) who tweets at @kerrypolka

“Most books I read are still e-books, mostly because I do a lot of reading on my commute and it’s much harder to keep a paper book open and at eye level when you’re clinging one-handed to the pole on the Northern line, but I’ve been making more time to read for pleasure and those are usually print books.”
http://www.planestrainsandplantagenets.com/2017/06/reading-print-books/