Eat at Home, Read the Books

"For the price of a dinner in this town, you can buy all the books. So eat at home and read the books."

 - Jack Rabinovitch as he announced the winner of the Giller Prize tonight.

Very cool!

Writers & Readers - Give and Take

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"Writers provide language that can evoke feeling; we readers supply the experience."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 107

This give and take between writer and reader is fascinating. We use our experience when reading to identify with the character. The writer hopes that we will be able to do so and thus evoke an emotion in us. This is the greatest form of entertainment. Living and experiencing through each other's stories.

Windows of Opportunity for Readers

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"This window of opportunity also explains why one of the strongest predictors of a child's reading ability in school os the amount of one-to-one conversation between caregiver and child in the first three years of life.

The ability to differentiate sounds is the first crucial step to the path to associating sounds with letters. Kids who don't learn to distinguish sounds during that time usually have trouble learning to read later on.

Reading's first lessons don't happens in school: They happen in the crib during that important window of opportunity."

- David Walsh, PhD. No: Why Kids - of all Ages - Need to Hear It and Ways Parents Can Say It. Free Press, Toronto. 2007. pg 45

Moving On

"The only thing worse than feeling you can't move on, is the moment you realize you can."

- Tommy from the television series Instant Star


I completely identify with this sentiment. I'm going through this exact thing right now, which you would know if you read my main blog Silent Cacophony or if you follow me on Twitter. 

It's a scary thought, thinking you can't move on, and even scarier when you realize you can.

It's funny how everything that has been happening lately, even watching a random episode of this show, which I normally don't watch, ends up speaking to me.

It's like it's just the time for me to move on and the world is letting me know.

Ongoing Life Program

"Reading can be part of an ongoing life program, empowering the reader to rethink present coping strategies, to try out new behaviours, new moves."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 99

Reading empowers all of us. We can see how characters have dealt with situations and what consequences sprang forth from their decisions. Thus, in the future, if we come across a similar situation or predicament, we have already had a little bit of a rehearsal in how to deal with it. That is only one way that reading can help us.

Gold thinks that we should read to also help us cope with things that have already happened. We can identify with characters and thus be removed from our own situation slightly.

As you can see from the label cloud on the sidebar, I have extensively quoted Joseph Gold here. His ideas about story and literature really speak to human experience and I am glad that I can share them with you here.

Reading Isn't Complicated, it just seems that way.

"When universities made literature part of their curriculum, they had to turn it into something very serious and professional in order to justify its inclusion.

In other words, they created an “expertise” of reading; they cornered the market in “understanding” literature, and they made reading seem very complicated."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 313

We Have Access to an Enormous Store of Helping Info

"All literature grows out of human experience, the writer’s experience and observation. It is rendered into story form for our benefit, a contribution to the general store of wisdom. Once we see that our reading can be related to our own lives, we have access to an enormous store of helping information."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 233

What We Know About Reading

"So we have learned two important things just now about reading:

1. Since language originates in sound, every written story has a voice we can hear as we read, and join with if we like the sound of it. If you read any story aloud and listen carefully, you will hear below your voice the voice of the writer coming through, borrowing your sound equipment.

2. Writing enlists the full physiological model of the reader, who is able to see, hear, taste, smell, and touch, as well as move, while reading at rest. This is achieved because all these powers originate in the brain and reading language gives access to them directly as mental representation."

- Joseph Gold.  Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 259

Books are Portable Magic

"books are a uniquely portable magic."

- Stephen King. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribiner: New York, 2000. pg 104

I wholeheartedly agree with Stephen King here. We should remember to never take books for granted. They are indeed magic.

Don't Give Up Access to Essential Info!

"People who do not read and do not demand a wide range of material to read, especially fiction, give up access to essential information about their world, about their relation to it and to themselves, and about how others think and feel."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. pg 255

No Escape from Ourselves - Just the Chaos

"When we read, we do not truly escape—there is no escape from ourselves; there is relief from our chaos; we reorganize and regenerate."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 331

Reading Isn't Complicated

"When universities made literature part of their curriculum, they had to turn it into something very serious and professional in order to justify its inclusion. . . . In other words, they created an “expertise” of reading; they cornered the market in “understanding” literature, and they made reading seem very complicated."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 313

No Escape From Ourselves

"When we read, we do not truly escape—there is no escape from ourselves; there is relief from our chaos; we reorganize and regenerate."

- Joseph Gold. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 331

Writing Lesson # 1 – Read, a lot

“Yet there is a learning process going on. Every book you pick up has its own lesson or lessons, and quite often the bad books have more to teach than the good ones.”

- Stephen King. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribiner: New York, 2000. pg 145.

Writing is Telepathy

Stephen King talks about the relationship between an author and a reader.

“We’ve engaged in an act of telepathy.” - King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. Scribiner: New York, 2000. pg 106

This is an amazing book that I think is a must read for all writers. Stephen King has a great story to tell. The book is part memoir, part autobiography. I really like his way of describing the relationship between author and reader.

The writer writes something from his imagination and then years later across different cities or countries, the reader picks up the message clearly, visually, and understands. That is telepathy in action. It is a magic that only the printed word can give us. The thoughts are transmitted from one brain to another.