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653f31f
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I did, however, vow to stop reading books that I didn't enjoy. I used to pride myself on finishing every book I started--no longer.
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reading
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Gretchen Rubin |
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576d556
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Cosa c'e di meglio, in realta, che starsene la sera accanto al fuoco con un bel libro in mano, mentre il vento sbatte contro le persiane e arde il lume della lampada?
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books
reading
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Gustave Flaubert |
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af28fac
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It'll be dark soon, Rudy.' He walked on. 'So what?' 'I'm going back.' Rudy stopped and watched her now as if she were betraying him. 'That's right, book thief. Leave me now. I bet if there was a lousy book at the end of this road, you'd keep walking. Wouldn't you?
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reading
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Markus Zusak |
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93f7104
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Holding a precious book meant to Mendel what an assignment with a woman might to another man. These moments were his platonic nights of love. Books had power over him; money never did. Great collectors, including the founder of a collection in Princeton University Library, tried in vain to recruit him as an adviser and buyer for their libraries--Jakob Mendel declined; no one could imagine him anywhere but in the Cafe Gluck. Thirty-three years ago, when his beard was still soft and black and he had ringlets over his forehead, he had come from the east to Vienna, a crook-backed lad, to study for the rabbinate, but he had soon abandoned Jehovah the harsh One God to give himself up to idolatry in the form of the brilliant, thousand-fold polytheism of books. That was when he had first found his way to the Cafe Gluck, and gradually it became his workplace, his headquarters, his post office, his world. Like an astronomer alone in his observatory, studying myriads of stars every night through the tiny round lens of the telescope, observing their mysterious courses, their wandering multitude as they are extinguished and then appear again, so Jakob Mendel looked through his glasses out from that rectangular table into the other universe of books, also eternally circling and being reborn in that world above our own.
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books
collecting-books
knowledge
love
obsession
reading
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Stefan Zweig |
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81017db
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Like the vacationer who returns to a beloved summer house year after year, the addicted reader opens book three or four or eleven in a given series and is thoroughly at home in the locale--its by now familiar native characters, the verbal shrubbery and the narrative floorboards that occasionally creak.
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literature
mysteries
reading
series-books
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Selma G. Lanes |
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c407c5a
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This is where we should start focusing this conversation: how men (as readers, critics, and editors) can start to bear the responsibility for becoming better, broader readers.
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feminism
men
readers
reading
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Roxane Gay |
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cbabddd
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I don't know what to say about it, except that it moved me in a way one hopes to be moved each time he begins a book.
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book
books
history-of-love
nicole-krauss
reading
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Nicole Krauss |
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7aed1c5
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My reading might be pointless in terms of the history of literary criticism; but it's not pointless in terms of pleasure.
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reading
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Julian Barnes |
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8af836f
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Ahora digo --dijo a esta sazon Don Quijote-- que el que lee mucho y anda mucho ve mucho y sabe mucho.
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reading
traveling
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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
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4291881
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{...} I was okay with things the way they were. No, not okay: I longed and suffered and pined with the rest of humanity. Sometimes I was happy enough with the book I was reading or the book I was writing, and the life I was stuck inside felt like a house on a rainy day. But most of the time I was just plain dying to get out. All I needed--all I have ever needed--was someone to challenge me, to serve as a goad, an instigator, a stirrer of the pot. I hated trouble, but I loved troublemakers. I hated chance and uncertainty, but I was drawn to those who showed up on your doorstep with their own pair of dice.
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reading
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Michael Chabon |
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311cc4d
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They had started one of those wish-fulfillment kids' adventure books, where the boy hero has exactly the qualities he needs to triumph, at every moment... She'd been bored and annoyed, and at one point she tried to explain to Sebastian why it wasn't her favor-ite of his books. But Sebastian had loved the book unreservedly. Why hadn't she just read the fucking thing with gusto and relished every moment with her son? Why had she brought her adult judgment and professional story opinions to a book her kid loved? Of course the child hero should always triumph! Who wanted a kids' book to feel like real life? Real life was fucking intolerable.
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child
childhood
hero
judgment
kid
life
reading
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Maile Meloy |
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054de01
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Es, pues, de saber que este sobredicho hidalgo, los ratos que estaba ocioso, que eran los mas del ano, se daba a leer.
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reading
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Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra |
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eac4a31
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I regretted my human form briefly; it would be so much easier to drag and rope information into the brain as neatly as one dragged and dropped information on the computer. Perhaps I was suffering from a touch of information sickness? If I could weed out my thoughts...There was one reliable cure I've found, a bit of the hair of the dog--the release in reading. Not a manual: something with a narrative, a chute built by a writer and waxed until the reader fell into it and skittered right to the end without stopping. The relief of being in someone else's hands. Yes, exactly: I needed to be under a spell....it didn't matter who I was, or what I did, or where I paid taxes, or how long I stayed. I'm sure it didn't matter if the book had RFID tags or a checkout card with a ladder of scrawled names, though tags were neat. I knew the librarians would help me figure out anything I needed to know later--I was under the librarians' protection. Civil servants and servants of civility, they had my back. They would be whatever they needed to be that day: information professionals, teachers, police, community organizers, computer technicians, historians, confidantes, clerks, social workers, storytellers, or in this case, guardians of my peace. They were the authors of this opportunity--diversion from the economy and distraction from snow, protectors of the bubble of concentration I'd found in the maddening world. And I knew they wouldn't disturb me until closing time.
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peace
reading
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Marilyn Johnson |
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ecd81d0
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I sit, tired of reading. I am sick of books. I can't tell where I leave off and the books begin. I'm nobody. I'm a polluted nothing. A confessed sin, an open door, the clutterer in the clutter.
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books
burnout
ennui
reading
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Katherine Dunn |
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799e843
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I know you read very widely. Almost like cultural foraging.
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reading
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Clifford Ross |
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323aa4e
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I began by making assumptions about the stories Borges chose for me -- that Kipling's prose would be stilted, Stevenson's childish, Joyce's unintelligible -- buy very soon prejudice gave way to experience, and the discovery of one story gave way to another.
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prejudice
reading
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Alberto Manguel |
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cfd8cfa
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The fine and varied literature that I read was almost all in translation: from classic works by Jack London, Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens, to detective stories by Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie and Georges Simenon, not to mention fascinating pornographic books. I also appreciated the biblical stories that contained all three genres.
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reading
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Shlomo Sand |
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5f02aa6
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I couldn't believe it. It wasn't just that he knew about Narnia. I could tell that he knew what I meant by a Narnia cubby. It was all there in his eyes. He knew that I didn't actually think I was Lucy going through a real door to magical lands. He knew that the cubby in the Roadmaster was a sane person's ticket to freedom of thought.
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reading
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Kathryn Lasky |
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aaee389
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The shelves were supposed to be loaded with books--but they were, of course, really doors: each book-lid opened as exciting as Alice putting her gold key in the lock. I spent days running in and out of other worlds like a time bandit, or a spy. I was as excited as I've ever been in my life, in that library: scoring new books the minute they came in; ordering books I'd heard of--then waiting, fevered, for them to arrive, like they were the word Christmas.
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libraries
library
library-books
reading
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Caitlin Moran |
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1c2da2c
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We read privately, mentally listening to the writer's voice and translating the writer's thoughts. The book remains static and fixed; the reader journeys through it. Picking up the book in the first place entails an active pursuit of understanding. Holding the book, we are aware of posterity and continuity. Knowing that the printed word is always edited, typeset and proof-read before it reaches us, we appreciate its literary authority. Having paid money for it (often), we have a sense of investment and a pride of ownership, not to mention a feeling of general virtue.
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reading
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Lynne Truss |
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edbd365
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Muhammad's numerous wives have occasioned a good deal of prurient interest in the West, but it would be a mistake to imagine the Prophet basking decadently in sensual delight, like some of the later Islamic rulers. In Mecca, Muhammad had remained monogamous, married only to Khadija, even though polygamy was common in Arabia. Khadija was a good deal older than he, but bore him at least six children, of whom only four daughters survived. In Medina, Muhammad became a great sayyid (chief), and was expected to have a large harem, but most of these marriages were politically motivated.
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reading
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Karen Armstrong |
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b3e8aa7
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The more I read the more I fought against the assumption that literature is for the minority - of a particular education or class. Books were my birthright too.
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class
education
reading
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Jeanette Winterson |
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bb66dce
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Had I been able to formulate my first impressions of the United States, I might have said that there was a place in America called Kansas, where people could find a magic land at the heart of a cyclone.
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reading
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Azar Nafisi |