NOT reading?

What are YOU reading? Curious people wanna know.

                                           

The link below highlights a few "popular" books that the majority of Americans haven't read. Why? Because the majority of Americans aren't readers!

https://www.barna.org/barna-update/culture/678-books-the-bestsellers-americans-are-and-aren-t-reading#.U-KBxrl0ycw

Have you read THE HUNGER GAMES? Its sequel, CATCHING FIRE?
Howzabout any others on the list?

For me, I'd generally rather ignore the TV and instead be reading. Why?
--expands my horizons
--challenges my world-view
--stretches my vocab
--makes ME think up images that represent the story, instead of TV serving up pictures (and sound) in its soporific, mind-controlling, commercially-driven environment. (if ya wanna know how I really feel about television...well, let me just misquote Stephen King, who calls it the glass pacifier--actual term, "the glass teat." I'll bet your mind just came up with an image!)
--invites me to wonder about an author's meaning, their context, their biography
--helps me to applaud the gift of creativity as we emulate our creator.

I Like to Party Hearty!

  


Half-year report (stats as of 6/30/14):
# 77 books read (he's on a record pace, woo-hoo!)

Best book I read this year:
(I know, I'm supposed to say, "The Bible." Duh...yes, I do include the Bible every yr that I read it cover-to-cover = most years = 9 times in the last 11 years...which is the extent of my spreadsheet. Wish I'd started keeping track of all my reading sooner!)

--Best Literary Fiction: .........Jodi Picoult's 19 MINUTES.
--Best Thriller: ......................S. King's DR. SLEEP (Sequel to THE SHINING.)
--Best Non-fiction: .................E. B. White's 1977 ESSAYS. These are like music!

I'd love to hear about your favs for the yr...or, the decade...or...life?

(for my life, surely Tolkien's LOTR and CSLewis' Narnia and his Space Trilogy. I have reread them all so many times...in fact, I feel the urge coming on yet again to immerse myself in Middle Earth!)

Gotta Read!

Where shall we go, you and I,
   on two wheels so sweet?
Anywhere, we have no care
   and need nothing to eat:
We'll dream our dreams
   inside the covers
and share our joys
   as gonzo book-lovers!

               =-=-=-=

Yes, this is almost what my little three-wheeled scooter looked like when we returned from the library two weeks ago! When you're an addict, MORE is always better! Art, travel, biography, and fiction all rode home, bouncing in my basket or waving wildly in a bag on my handlebars!

Not only do I HAVE to read...but in my reading I find inspiration to write...as that sagacious Stephen King said, "If you want to write, you need to read. A lot." or words to that effect.

What writer has absolutely charmed you, cannot wait to read more? Curious people want to know (in comments below?)

BTW, looks like my front tire needs a little air...I suspect nobody who knows me well would ever worry about my running out of (hot) air!

Imagination

   Yesterday I was conversing with a catbird. She was being a bit shy, until her mother swept out of the bushes and cuffed her smartly, muttering something about talking to strangers. How did Mumsy know I was strange?
   Stranger things have happened. While I was basking in the warm sunlight, book in hand (THE BOOK OF MISCHIEF, by Stern, a collection of short stories--zany!) a complete stranger came up to me. Asking what I was reading, he riposted with not one but two books he'd recently devoured. How strangely delightful, to talk about books with someone whose name I don't even know! We wished one another good day, and as he toddled off with his curiously silent companion, I wondered if she was not a reader, or was she simply aware that there was no dishonor in surrendering to silence in the presence of two lads with the gift of the blarney?

   I love this graphic...almost as much as I love the punchy intent of the caption. Turn off that clamoring small screen and step onto this bookstrewn path--let your own imagination paint pictures for you rather than being force-fed pablum by the writers/producers/directors and advertisers.

   I typo-ed the above ppg to read, "I live this graphic..." Hmmm, I hope so!

   What are you reading now? I just started ESSAYS OF E. B. WHITE, 1977. These are delightful glimpses of a gone-by world whose echoes yet linger...but are fading with my generation. The writing seems effortless and fluid, which of course means that he polished his phrases in loving labor. The topics are whimsical and homey. Get your hands on this book if you like reminiscences that are both personal yet universal, drawing on life from NYC to small-town Maine.

   I'm also reading the afore-mentioned BOOK OF MISCHIEF, where dreams come true and whimsy turns to tragedy. Plus, I'm plugging through THE FIELD GUIDE TO BIRDS AND WILDFLOWERS OF CASCO BAY AND PEAKS ISLAND...which describes the view out my front window! I'm also plugging away at the Great Books, which is a topic to be revisited anon.

   Elizabeth thinks I'm nutso to read two or three books at once, but I like to have something whimsical or fluffy to counter-balance a "chew-thoroughly-before-swallowing" book like the ESSAYS. (I think she's nutso to read the last page of a book before its turn, so, we're even!)

"Of course you're a writer."

I recently overheard a published novelist badgering his friend, "You have to write: it's the only way to express yourself and work through your emotions!"

I later found out that the recipient of the hassling was an excellent water-color artist and a decent saxophone player...as if he couldn't express himself through art AND music? Surely, the writer was a bit stuck in his own world...making me wonder how often we look at others but only see what our own field of view permits us to see?

Now, that's a nice twist to use in a story: the flawed character, the narcissist who cannot really see anyone else with clarity--he superimposes his own image and experience. Sadly true: we fail to see others for lack of looking beyond the end of our own nose!

How do you get inside someone else's life? Their experiences, their feelings?

Part of the answer, of course, (duh,) is to be a good listener: don't solve their problems, don't criticize their actions, don't reprove their emotions--just listen.

Here's another part of the answer, one I'll bet you didn't expect--be a good reader.

Didja expect that? Ha! It's not really my own idea (really, how many truly original ideas are invented every year? Not many!)...but I sorta synthesized it from thinking about Stephen King's dictum that to be a good writer one needs to both read a lot and to write a lot!

My point is...the well-read person has a great breadth of (second-hand) experience. The reader is more likely to have met a similar person or problem in print, and can truly better understand their friend's plight.

That's what I think...what are your thoughts?

Fantasy? Fantastic!

Fantasy.

What do you think of when you read that word?

Faeries? (of the classical sort?

...or, Tinkerbelle?

Hobbits, orcs, ents?

Talking carnivorous plants (Little Shop of Horrors)?

Space aliens who are thwarted only when reluctant heroes ally themselves with the village idiot (Dreamcatcher, S. King)?

My mind goes straight-way to Tolkien and CSLewis. Okay, shows my age, I know. Madeleine l'Engle just wasn't that popular when I was in those formative years as a reader. The greats of sci-fi were popular, so I read lotsa Asimov, Pohl, Bradbury...but, where does sci-fi stop and fantasy begin? I didn't catch up with Tolkien and Lewis' fantasies until college, courtesy of a close friend who became even closer over the yrs (she made a darn fine mother of our children...and she and I still read a lotta the same stuff together!)

Last month, I read: a mystery, a poetry collection, a romance, 2 biographies/memoires, 2 literary novels, a non-fiction (THE YR 1000: history of England), and two thrillers. In my mind, the wider or more old-fashioned definition of fantasy embraces almost all of these works--they are the works of the writers' imaginations--even the non-fiction still requires inventiveness and aptitude with phrases and creative ways of presenting history that made it that book a fun, lively read--so fun, I read several ppghs aloud while Elizabeth (pretended to?) listened as she cooked.

Do you like to stick with just one genre of reading? What invites you to try something different? I need to know these answers, as a writer and marketer of my works...I'd deeply apprec yr comments.

Oh, and that bridges to another critical query--what moves you when buying books as gifts...but, more on that for another day.

Again, pls take a sec to comment, below. Thnx, D.

Endless Possibilities.

cited in THE YELLOW-LIGHTED BOOKSHOP by Lewis Buzbee, p. 3.

   Standing in the middle of [any bookshop]...I can't help but feel the possibility of the universe unfolding a little, once upon a time.

   Or, as Stephen King stated, on being told by his Mom, "Stevie, write your own stories..."

  --I saw a world of endless possibilities open up before me. [S.K.]

=-=-=-=-=-=

That, to me, is the essence of both writing and of reading--it's open-ended. Completely and utterly full of potential. Reach in with both hands and grab!

Only one problem...shall I read now, or shall I write?

I Imagine, therefore, something is!

PHANTASY

"Remarkably, in the ancient traditions, the imagination or "phantasy" was considered a sense. In that psychology, in the detailed summary of Robert Burton's 1620 Anatomy of Melancholy, in addition to the outward senses of sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch,
we have three inward senses: the Common Sense, Memory, and Phantasy. Burton stated:

Phantasy, or imagination...is an inward sense which doth more fully examine the species perceived by common sense, of things present or absent, and keeps them longer, recalling them to mind again, or making new of his own.

This old idea of imagination as a sense that produces "monstrous and prodigious things by recombining and re-forming the more orderly perceptions of memory and the other senses. As in dreams, the ingredients are familiar but the new reality is not."

--from: Robert Pinsky's SINGING SCHOOL: Learning to Write (and Read) Poetry by Studying with the Masters. 2013. pg 148.

. . . . . . .

I like "monstruous and prodigious things" --guess that's why I write fiction and poetry and am a Stephen King fan...and a Dean Koontz fan...and CSLewis and Tolkien and Asimov and...you get the drift.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

I traveled far and wide today

   I did not take a cab

I took neither bus nor car

   nor trip on substance from a lab.

I rode in comfort, but not by train,

   nor boat nor aeroplane.

Departure...arrival--by seconds parted:

   Yes, I got there, as soon as I started.

No luggage, no seatbelt,

   and no need for "security,"

I arrived by conveyance

   of eld, not futurity.

Yes, book in my lap

   and others beside

I tip my cap

   to my magical ride.

--DLS 11/9/13