#how we read

[robertogreco]

Unshelved, by Gene Ambaum and Bill Barnes (via Jesús Vera)

[cheshirelibrary]

How the World Reads

[data source:]

PewResearchCenter

[robertogreco]

I also believe that reading is a profoundly creative act, that every act of reading is a collaboration between author and reader. I don’t understand why more people aren’t interested in this alchemy. It’s such an act of grace to give someone else ten or fifteen hours out of your own irreplaceable life, and allow their voice, thoughts, and imaginings into your head. I can’t respect any writer who isn’t abjectly grateful for the faith, generosity, and trust in that. I think there’s an unspoken, maybe even unconscious contempt for reading as merely “passive” in many people who obsess about writers and writing. Discussion of writers and writing generally bores me. But I’m always interested in why people read and why they like what they like. That’s far more likely to surprise and enlighten me than someone fretting about daily word counts and agonizing over their process.

Laura Miller (via Austin Kleon)

[robertogreco]

We fetishize the idea of being a writer in a variety of ways, most of them narcissistic. So when I meet a big reader who professes no desire to write, I think of them as a beautiful, almost mythical creature, like a unicorn, to be celebrated.

Laura Miller (via Austin Kleon)

[robertogreco]

““Office” with a view” —Evgeny Morozov (Italy)

[robertogreco]

Kameelah Janan Rasheed: The Edge of Legibility | Art21 "New York Close Up":

logo·​phile | \ ˈlȯ-gə-ˌfī(-ə)l : a lover of words. A self-described "learner," immersed in books since childhood, text-based artist Kameelah Janan Rasheed is uniquely fascinated with the written word and its power to both define and destabilize how we understand the world. Rasheed photocopies pages from books and printed materials, cuts out words and sentences, and re-arranges them in poetic, provocative, or even confusing combinations. The resulting sprawling wall collages, billboards, films and public installations encourage viewers to do the work of understanding. "It’s really an invitation," says Rasheed, "Come think with me." This short documentary film explores the artist’s expansive ideas and miniaturist process in her book-filled, Brooklyn home studio; the film’s exclusively close up style mirrors Rasheed’s own preoccupation with fragments, slowly building up a portrait over time.

From her studio, Rasheed sorts through stacks of childhood drawings and family photographs while recounting her father’s conversion to Islam in the early 1980s. His method of note taking, excerpting, and annotating inspired Rasheed’s own artistic practice. "I was thinking of this idea of talking back to a text," says the artist, "Each time we read something, we’re annotating on the page or in our heads and creating a new text. It’s this act of collaboration between the reader and the writer." At work on a new piece, Rasheed searches her books for specific shapes and styles of lettering, rather than particular words. She pieces together these fragments into longer phrases and sentences, intuitively creating combinations that code or complicate that which could be said plainly. Rather than jumping to understanding, viewers are invited to move more slowly and engage with works over and over again to create layers of meaning. For Rasheed, this approach also presents a powerful possibility for how we can publicly move through the world and create a kind of self-protection. "I think a lot about what it actually means to make myself legible," says the artist. "How you present yourself to the world that's legible and appealing to people, versus I'm not gonna make myself known until I'm ready."

For more on Kameelah Janan Rasheed, see her website, a post from earlier this year, and this growing collection of bookmarks.

[robertogreco]

Kameelah Janan Rasheed lecture for RISD Graphic Design's Spring 2020 Lecture Series

Why? See ALL THE TAGS (and, if only, the fifty plus more that got cut off when posting).

[robertogreco]

Though I should say that I’m often not a reader of books from one end to the other but a rover, as a result of more than half a lifetime of doing research in books, where you’re there not just for the pleasure (though there is often considerable pleasure) but to find out some particular thing. Also I get interrupted a lot, and misplace books in this house of books, and so one way or another I’m usually reading about a dozen books at a time.

Rebecca Solnit