If you like writing, and you're not reading Tom Shroder's blog, you should be.
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Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Showing posts with label reading. Show all posts
Friday, December 11, 2009
Wednesday, August 12, 2009
Cut yourself off from everything and ... read
Bob Edwards (of "The Bob Edwards Show" on satellite radio) excerpted the following quote from this story in the L.A. Times about whether, in a world of instant and brief communications, we are losing the ability to immerse ourselves in a book and just read.
"Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves. This is what Conroy was hinting at in his account of adolescence, the way books enlarge us by giving direct access to experiences not our own. In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise. Such a state is increasingly elusive in our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted. Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time."
"Reading is an act of contemplation, perhaps the only act in which we allow ourselves to merge with the consciousness of another human being. We possess the books we read, animating the waiting stillness of their language, but they possess us also, filling us with thoughts and observations, asking us to make them part of ourselves. This is what Conroy was hinting at in his account of adolescence, the way books enlarge us by giving direct access to experiences not our own. In order for this to work, however, we need a certain type of silence, an ability to filter out the noise. Such a state is increasingly elusive in our over-networked culture, in which every rumor and mundanity is blogged and tweeted. Today, it seems it is not contemplation we seek but an odd sort of distraction masquerading as being in the know. Why? Because of the illusion that illumination is based on speed, that it is more important to react than to think, that we live in a culture in which something is attached to every bit of time."
Saturday, May 9, 2009
What do you call ...
... an author that you're reading for the first time? Not a first-time author ... maybe a first-read author...
Anyway, I just started Peter Mathiessen's 'The Snow Leopard.' I've never read Mathiessen, and it got me thinking about how often we read authors for the first time, or, put another way, how hard it is sometimes to read someone other than an author we really like.
This is toughest for me with fiction authors. For example, I'd read Michael Chabon if he wrote directions on how to poke a stick in your eye, and I'd love it. But it's often hard for me to make the leap to a fiction author I'm not familiar with.
That said, I will read Milan Kundera (thanks to recommendation from Jeff) and Cormac McCarthy for the first time this year. I have an old Robin Cook novel hanging around. I plan to pick up something from Philip Roth (thanks again to Jeff). That's it for new fiction authors.
How do you find/try new fiction writers? Anybody you'd recommend to me or others reading this?
Anyway, I just started Peter Mathiessen's 'The Snow Leopard.' I've never read Mathiessen, and it got me thinking about how often we read authors for the first time, or, put another way, how hard it is sometimes to read someone other than an author we really like.
This is toughest for me with fiction authors. For example, I'd read Michael Chabon if he wrote directions on how to poke a stick in your eye, and I'd love it. But it's often hard for me to make the leap to a fiction author I'm not familiar with.
That said, I will read Milan Kundera (thanks to recommendation from Jeff) and Cormac McCarthy for the first time this year. I have an old Robin Cook novel hanging around. I plan to pick up something from Philip Roth (thanks again to Jeff). That's it for new fiction authors.
How do you find/try new fiction writers? Anybody you'd recommend to me or others reading this?
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