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

Exercise Your Memory - Read

"Literature helps you to exercise your memory because your memory is keyed to feelings associated with memory and literature specializes in calling forth feelings."

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

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

Miracles are a Retelling

"Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see."

- C.S. Lewis

Without Books...

"Books are the carriers of civilization. Without books, history is silent, literature dumb, science crippled, thought and speculation are at a standstill."

- Barbara W. Tuchman

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.

Literature Irrigates the Deserts

“Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become.”

- C.S. Lewis

We Need Story

"We need other people’s well-composed stories and insights to free us from our own habits, and we also need to see that we can read consciously, that there is a conversation between literature and life, our life."

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

Science Misses

“Science can never speak of the sanctity of life.”
- Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, Shalom in the Home author on Word this Week 4 Nov 2007

This is why I believe to get a true picture of our reality we need to look further than science. We need to explore good literature and works of art. And we also need to pay attention to the world religions. Each of these things hold truths if we listen.

Inoculate Against the Future

“Reading stories about what hasn’t happened to us yet can inoculate us to future problems by giving us practice, safe, imaginary practice, at being in the problem now.”
- Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 134

Reading fiction can help prepare us for things that haven’t happened yet. What a cool concept. I don’t think this is a reason to read per se, but it is definitely one of the benefits.

I think we are influenced by everything we come into contact with. Good literature can transport us into different situations and times. It makes sense that we can learn from them.

Happy Monday Everyone!

It's Become a Discipline

“On the one hand, reading literature . . . has become a “discipline,” . . .

On the other hand, . . . it is thought to be a frivolous entertainment not much connected to “real life.”

- Gold, Joseph. Read For Your Life: Literature as a Life Support System. Fitzhenry and Whiteside: Markham, 1990. pg 5

Literature is connected to real life. It is not frivolous and it is not regulated to scholars. Story is something that everyone understands. I believe that story is, in fact, the nature of reality. I am in the process of collecting my thoughts and other people’s thoughts on this subject. It is a fascinating topic and there are literally hundreds of quotations on this subject that I have already collected.

The book from which I took this quotation discusses how we can use literature as a coping mechanism in our daily lives. The doctor who wrote it uses literature in his therapy. I think this is a great idea. Stories have been used to educate since the beginning of time. Stories help us to understand all sort of universal truths.