Posts filed under “reading”.
The Panting and Happy Reader
“Good Readers and Good Writers” (from Lectures on Literature) by Vladimir Nabokov: My course, among other things, is a kind of detective investigation of the mystery of literary structures. “How to be a Good Reader” or “Kindness to Authors” – something of that sort might serve to provide a subtitle for these various discussions of [...]
Abandoning Anne Bronte
I was reading Anne Bronte’s Agnes Grey for the first time when I came across this sentence on page 38. I returned, however, with unabated vigour to my work – a more arduous task than anyone can imagine, who has not felt something like the misery of being charged with the care and direction of [...]
Back Home Again
I didn’t read much during five weeks in Norway. Saving Room for Dessert by KC Constantine; I Curse the River of Time by Per Petterson; and Jane Smiley’s Private Life. I didn’t quite finish William Trevor’s Love and Summer on the plane home, so I don’t suppose that counts. Norway was great, met up with [...]
Zadie Smith on Reading and Writing
I don’t write that much. There are people who write every day, and it’s part of their life, and I go for months, and recently years, without writing fiction, for example. For me, it is not a matter of daily survival. And I’ve heard writers speak of something that they can’t help but do. The [...]
The Future of Books and Publishing
Richard Nash talks about book publishing: Basically, the best-selling five hundred books each year will likely be published much like Little Brown publishes James Patterson, on a TV production model, or like Scholastic did Harry Potter and Doubleday Dan Brown, on a big Hollywood blockbuster model. The rest will be published by niche social publishing [...]
