“Read him slowly, dear girl, you must read Kipling slowly. Watch carefully where the commas fall so you can discover the natural pauses. He is a writer who used pen and ink. He looked up from the page a lot, I believe, stared through his window and listened to birds, as most writers who are alone do. Some do not know the names of birds, though he did. Your eye is too quick and North American. Think about the speed of his pen. What an appalling, barnacled old first paragraph it is otherwise.”
The English Patient by Michael Ondaatje
I just love this quote…. Found here at this blog.
It is an interesting post on how he used to take 6 months or a year to read a book! Which made me think about how fast I read: FAST. I read 3 books last week. I love to read. It is my favorite thing to do…..MY best memory from school is from 2nd grade and Mrs. Alldinger taught me how to read and my whole world opened up. I whizzed thru Little House on the Prairie and Nancy Drew. By the time I was 12 I was reading Stephen King and any book I could get my hands on in the horror genre. There was not much fantasy writing going on then. And, so I read and read and read. What is better than a good book
I have a great library ( I could not afford to keep myself in books. Forget clothes, give me books!). I go often, I volunteer, I breathe, I relax at the library. Bookstores are calming also, as I browse the titles and and mentally note books to pick up from the library.
In all my reading years, it has never taken me 6 months to read anything. I have to wonder what I could be missing by not savoring a text. The nuances, the subtle descripton I might have skimmed over. Is is an injustice to the author to breeze thru book after book. Obviously, some books are easy quick reads, but I might benefit from taking my time with a longer text. Specifically, I think of Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander series. It takes her years to put out one of these books. Each one is about 900 pages and I just breeze thru it in a week. What if I took my time and read it slowly I wonder how rich that experience might be. Maybe a whole new world of delicious reading richness awaits. How exciting is that
The next book: A Breath of Snow and Ashesshould be out in late September. And, I will see about taking my time and fully enjoying Jamie and Claire. I love Jamie. Might be a good time to re-read all the Outlander books again.
Peace
