'The books transported her into new worlds and introduced her to amazing people who lived exciting lives. She went on olden-day sailing ships with Joseph Conrad. She went to Africa with Ernest Hemingway and to India with Rudyard Kipling. She traveled all over the world while sitting in her little room in an English village.' - Roald Dahl, Matilda
'She read all sorts of things: travels, and sermons, and old magazines. Nothing was so dull that she couldn't get through with it. Anything really interesting absorbed her so that she never knew what was going on about her. The little girls to whose houses she went visiting had found this out, and always hid away their story-books when she was expected to tea. If they didn't do this, she was sure to pick one up and plunge in, and then it was no use to call her, or tug at her dress, for she neither saw nor heard anything more, till it was time to go home.' - Susan Coolidge, What Katy Did
This year, I tried something different. Instead of my usual list of resolutions (which I already knew were going to be broken before the sun set on the first day of the year), I resolved to save a tree and just not make any New Year's resolutions.
Which lasted all of one day. By the end of January 1st, 2013, I had already come up with several. These ranged from the doable (I will fit into my super-tight pair of jeans by March) to the remotely possible idea of trekking in the Himalayas (yes, I know that's more than remotely possible, but very doubtful if, like yours truly, your world starts spinning and the not-so-distant ground seems to rush up to meet you when you stand on a table and look down) and finally to the completely unrealistic (taking Broadway by storm as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar).
One of these was also the somewhat vague 'Read more' which immediately begs the question: Read more what? Or, to avoid being vague: What kind of books should I be reading more often? With age, I've become more selective about what I read, broadly categorizing them into four categories. The first would be Comfort or Brain-snooze reads - books that I've read and re-read and can now comfortably skim through on the metro or in the bathroom. Next would be the Books that I Diss in Public But Secretly Enjoy - this would include the Twilight series and Fifty Shades of Grey (excellent reading when I'm on the pot). The third category could be described as 'Literary' Books that Everyone's Reading and that I Read At Least Partially So That I Can Bring Them Up in Conversation to Avoid Looking Like a Total Moron - can't think of any examples offhand probably because they're just that forgettable. Or maybe because I read them for the wrong reasons.
And finally, there are the ones I like to describe as 'Word Orgasms', the books that I read just for the little shiver that runs down my back, for epiphany, for passion, for beauty and most of all, for truth. To steal a line from Samwise Gamgee, these are the stories that really stick with us, that really mean something - Rilke, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Shelley, Donne, Shakespeare, Kerouac, Ginsberg ... They're the ones that, even once you've outgrown them, are still accorded a visible place on your bookshelf in memory of that moment of communion.
These, however, are the rare few (or maybe I'm just not casting my net wide enough), and also require a sustained level of brain activity that does become a bit of a strain after too long. So, after picking a friend's brain, I'm putting forward a personal reading edict for the year 2013. That is to read books that I've never tried before. Read books that I've tossed aside without giving them time to come into their own (Anna Karenina that I tried reading at the green age of ten), genres that I've never been interested in (non-fiction!!). In other words, toss the categories mentioned above out the window and just read with an open mind, without calculating prematurely whether the book can be useful to me.
In other words, reading the way I read when I was a kid - adventurously, without any consideration whatsoever on whether the book I pick up is worth my time.
First things first, though - finishing the books I've already started, stopped and restarted.
This year I am Matilda.
'She read all sorts of things: travels, and sermons, and old magazines. Nothing was so dull that she couldn't get through with it. Anything really interesting absorbed her so that she never knew what was going on about her. The little girls to whose houses she went visiting had found this out, and always hid away their story-books when she was expected to tea. If they didn't do this, she was sure to pick one up and plunge in, and then it was no use to call her, or tug at her dress, for she neither saw nor heard anything more, till it was time to go home.' - Susan Coolidge, What Katy Did
This year, I tried something different. Instead of my usual list of resolutions (which I already knew were going to be broken before the sun set on the first day of the year), I resolved to save a tree and just not make any New Year's resolutions.
Which lasted all of one day. By the end of January 1st, 2013, I had already come up with several. These ranged from the doable (I will fit into my super-tight pair of jeans by March) to the remotely possible idea of trekking in the Himalayas (yes, I know that's more than remotely possible, but very doubtful if, like yours truly, your world starts spinning and the not-so-distant ground seems to rush up to meet you when you stand on a table and look down) and finally to the completely unrealistic (taking Broadway by storm as Judas in Jesus Christ Superstar).
One of these was also the somewhat vague 'Read more' which immediately begs the question: Read more what? Or, to avoid being vague: What kind of books should I be reading more often? With age, I've become more selective about what I read, broadly categorizing them into four categories. The first would be Comfort or Brain-snooze reads - books that I've read and re-read and can now comfortably skim through on the metro or in the bathroom. Next would be the Books that I Diss in Public But Secretly Enjoy - this would include the Twilight series and Fifty Shades of Grey (excellent reading when I'm on the pot). The third category could be described as 'Literary' Books that Everyone's Reading and that I Read At Least Partially So That I Can Bring Them Up in Conversation to Avoid Looking Like a Total Moron - can't think of any examples offhand probably because they're just that forgettable. Or maybe because I read them for the wrong reasons.
And finally, there are the ones I like to describe as 'Word Orgasms', the books that I read just for the little shiver that runs down my back, for epiphany, for passion, for beauty and most of all, for truth. To steal a line from Samwise Gamgee, these are the stories that really stick with us, that really mean something - Rilke, Dostoevsky, Joyce, Shelley, Donne, Shakespeare, Kerouac, Ginsberg ... They're the ones that, even once you've outgrown them, are still accorded a visible place on your bookshelf in memory of that moment of communion.
These, however, are the rare few (or maybe I'm just not casting my net wide enough), and also require a sustained level of brain activity that does become a bit of a strain after too long. So, after picking a friend's brain, I'm putting forward a personal reading edict for the year 2013. That is to read books that I've never tried before. Read books that I've tossed aside without giving them time to come into their own (Anna Karenina that I tried reading at the green age of ten), genres that I've never been interested in (non-fiction!!). In other words, toss the categories mentioned above out the window and just read with an open mind, without calculating prematurely whether the book can be useful to me.
In other words, reading the way I read when I was a kid - adventurously, without any consideration whatsoever on whether the book I pick up is worth my time.
First things first, though - finishing the books I've already started, stopped and restarted.
This year I am Matilda.
