{"id":1461,"date":"2011-03-02T22:10:02","date_gmt":"2011-03-03T03:10:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1461"},"modified":"2011-03-02T22:10:02","modified_gmt":"2011-03-03T03:10:02","slug":"reading-a-literary-no-brainer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/?p=1461","title":{"rendered":"Reading: A Literary No-Brainer?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Importance of Reading…<\/span><\/p>\n

Books and reading were hugely important to me and still are.\u00a0 The written word has always been such a key, central part of my life.\u00a0 I owe so much of how I grew up, what I know and how I think, to reading.\u00a0 Also, for better or worse, books provided an escape for me when I didn’t want to deal with the real-life situation at hand.\u00a0 They opened new worlds, taught me words and ideas and cultures, and provided a potent context for the world as I saw and experienced it.\u00a0 Reading taught me to love words and the world.<\/p>\n

…and Not-Reading<\/span><\/p>\n

Recently, I’ve learned the value of not reading, or at least of balancing reading with observing and listening, and with writing.\u00a0 Though reading is such valuable literary input, without some sort of output a person could get, well, literarily constipated. \u00a0 I’ll be writing about deliberate not-reading in The Life Literary<\/em>.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Of course, I’ll also be writing about deliberate reading.\u00a0 I’m going to write reviews of or maybe just a few brief remarks about books I’ve read.\u00a0 I’m going to dedicate an entire\u00a0page of this blog\u00a0to a list of books I’ve read<\/a> and another one to articles that I particularly like.<\/p>\n

Don’t Fear the Book Tsunami<\/span><\/p>\n

For some time now, the huge plethora of books and other conveyors of the written word depressed me for a couple of reasons.\u00a0 It was one of the final\u00a0things I allowed to keep me from writing.\u00a0 I doubted I would have anything valuable to add to all those words, all that verbal clatter, crash, bang, bang.\u00a0 I’ve gotten over that.\u00a0 I also despaired at how little I’ve read in spite of being a reader all my life.\u00a0 There’s so much I haven’t read, so many good authors and stories I don’t even know about, can’t quote, can hardly fake knowing about in conversations with people who have read them.\u00a0 How dare I start this so-called literary blog!\u00a0 I’m over that, too.\u00a0 Honestly, what did I expect of myself?\u00a0 Who can do it all?\u00a0 Who can read it all?\u00a0 So I’m going to celebrate what I have read, what I am reading, and what I\u00a0hope to\u00a0read in the future.\u00a0 What books I don’t have time for or knowledge of yet, well, they can just take a number and sit on a shelf somewhere and hope I get to them before I’m carried off to that great library in the sky.<\/p>\n

The One Quarter Rule<\/span><\/p>\n

I try to pick books and authors I’ll enjoy as well as benefit from.\u00a0 I read books that are pure entertainment and others that are outstanding modern and classic literature.\u00a0 A rule I set for myself long ago is the rule of one quarter.\u00a0 I won’t put down a book I may not want to finish until I’ve read one fourth of it.\u00a0 Some books grab you from the first sentence.\u00a0 A book I recently read didn’t really click until page 94 of its 553 pages.\u00a0 I always wanted to give a book a chance to make its case with me.<\/p>\n

Like a Living Thing<\/span><\/p>\n

One more thing: I almost believe a wall of books is practically alive, a living, breathing thing made up of many colorful, thick, pageful parts.\u00a0 It’s one of the few myths, albeit a homemade one, I allow myself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Importance of Reading… Books and reading were hugely important to me and still are.\u00a0 The written word has always been such a key, central part of my life.\u00a0 I owe so much of how I grew up, what I … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[138,137,139,136],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1461"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2957,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1461\/revisions\/2957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1461"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1461"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.thelifeliterary.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1461"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}