#why we read

[ometochtli2rabbit]

[nzbookwyrm]

[broadwaylover17]

For the Love of Books I decided to make a video about my love of reading. Literature has been a source of comfort for me,... https://ko-fi.com/broadwaylover17

[poetsandwriters]

[As a child] I was a hungry, hungry reader. I would gobble up my books, and when I finished them I would gobble up the newspaper. When I had devoured that, I would grab anything at hand that had text: cereal boxes, cookbooks, Girl Scout handbooks, matchbook covers, magazines. I needed to have something to read in front of me at all times. I sometimes slept with my books because I’d sneak them under my covers and read by flashlight and then fall asleep with them there. I was a fast reader, so I burned through material in no time. If I didn’t have something to read, I felt unmoored.

Susan Orlean (New York Times, 2018), featured in Kate Tuttle’s “Talking to Strangers: A Profile of Susan Orlean” in the November/December issue of Poets & Writers Magazine

[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)

[poetsandwriters]

On a day when the news on the Internet was depressing, bleak, or unspeakably awful, I opened the book and felt a quietness return to my mind instead of panic and emptiness.

Blair Hurley, in “My Year of Proust in the Age of Trump;” read the rest at pw.org!

[poetsandwriters]

“To find community was important to me. To not feel alone was a big reason I fell in love with books. I’m never alone if I have a book.”

—Tommy Orange, in First Fiction in the July/August issue of Poets & Writers Magazine (2018)

[poetsandwriters]

This year, I read a book each day during the month of August....Rumor is: It takes twenty-one days to form a habit. I’m happy to report that, after the challenge, I still read every day...just not a book a day. I’ve found that reading activates my creativity, so I’m looking forward to the work that will result.

Nicole Sealey, in this week’s Writers Recommend (Poets & Writers, 2017)