On the recommendation of several friends I joined a site called Goodreads. It's a place where people share book recommendations, form groups, etc. etc. It's a lovely idea, but I feel really embarrassed because these people read _a lot_, and I've managed to post four reviews so far.
When I was a kid I read about a book a day (Dad taught me to read before I started school, and he taught me how to speed read). Anyway, I read a lot. Used to drive my mother crazy because I would get so lost in a book that I wouldn't hear her calling me.
Now I live in words, and sometimes I just can't face any more words. I write for many hours -- playing with words. I research -- more words. I read for my writer's group. I provide critiques for a few people not in the writer's group. I try to keep up with the news of the day by reading newspapers and magazines. I end up wanting to sing Eliza Doolittle's song to Freddy -- Show Me. It begins. "Words, words, words, I'm so sick of words. I get words all day long first from him now from you. Is that all you blighter's can do?"
Reading was my primary form of entertainment. Now I've replaced it with watching movies and television, playing on my X-Box, going to the health club, riding my horse, working in the garden. Sometimes I miss my books so much. I walk past a shelf and it's like they're whispering too me.
"Remember the Piper at the Gates of Dawn? Wouldn't you like to read the Wind in the Willows again?"
"Remember when Sophy galloped her horse in Hyde Park?"
"Kip is rescuing the Mother Thing on Pluto. Shouldn't you be there to help?"
And there are all the new books filled with people I haven't met yet, but sense I would come to love. Worlds I haven't explored.
I love my job, but sometimes I miss that girl who got so lost she didn't hear her mother calling.
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written by Melindas, April 19, 2010
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written by Rosemary Kirstein, April 23, 2010
http://scienceblogs.com/principles/2010/04/its_in_the_dna.php?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+scienceblogs/uncertainprinciples+(Uncertain+Principles)&utm_content=Google+Reader
It made me feel a little better!
Chad's a physicist; his wife Kate Nepveu is a lawyer/blogger/reviewer.)
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written by Melindas, April 23, 2010
Here is a money quote from the article by Jobs. "The decision to enter publishing was a reversal for Jobs, who two years ago said that the book business was unsalvageable. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is, the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty per cent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.” But if reading books was low on the list of things that the iPad could do, it was nonetheless on the list, which meant that Amazon had become a competitor."
Here's another of my favorite lines from the article. "there is a running joke that the second book published on the Gutenberg press was about the death of the publishing busines
Read more: http://www.newyorker.com/repor...z0lw2utvte
It is long, but if you are interested in publishing and reading it's well worth your time.
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That's not how I used to read! You had to pry me away from books when I was a kid. And a teen. And in college.
And that person is still there, still wanting to own and dwell in every world ever pressed between two covers. Real or imagined -- as long as there was wonder to be found, I wanted it.
Still want it. But that seamless movement between reading and living no longer works. It's got to be a decision. It's now more a thing I do, and less a thing I am.
I take my wonder in small doses now, instead of the old deep immersion. Not the same thing at all.