{"id":1789,"date":"2009-11-03T20:03:36","date_gmt":"2009-11-04T01:03:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=1789"},"modified":"2009-11-04T06:08:15","modified_gmt":"2009-11-04T11:08:15","slug":"the-reading-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.silkentent.com\/Trees\/?p=1789","title":{"rendered":"The Reading Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

November 3, 2009
\nTues<\/strong>day<\/strong><\/p>\n

The only advice, indeed, that one person can give another about reading is to take no advice, to follow your own instincts, to use your own reason, to come to your own conclusions.
\n<\/em>\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 — Virginia Woolf, 1882-1941
\n\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0\u00c2\u00a0 English writer<\/p>\n

\"nablo093\"I got the thought from Virgina Woolf quoted above from A Book a Week<\/a><\/em>, a blog whose author, Becky Holmes, says “I’ve read a book per week for over 25 years. That’s a lot of books.”<\/p>\n

I’ll say. Even taking two weeks or more now and then for some long books, as she recently did for David Ebershoff’s The 19th Wife<\/em>, that’s more than a thousand books. I don’t know that I’ve read a thousand books in my lifetime. Maybe I have. I wasn’t counting until recently.<\/p>\n

I was an early reader and an avid reader. My mother read to me while she nursed my baby sister, and I probably taught myself to read before I started school.\u00c2\u00a0That baby sister<\/a> grew up to become a reading specialist and the author of two guides on using children’s literature to teach children to write. I grew up to explain Emily Dickinson and E. E. Cummings to two generations of lower Dauphin county eleventh graders before reclaiming the writing life I’d abandoned as an undergraduate.<\/p>\n

I wasn’t a flashlight-under-the-covers reader. When I was little, my grandmother would put me and my sister to bed and take our eyeglasses with her to her room. She would clean them, and her own, and then put them on her dresser and go to bed. After I knew she was asleep, I would creep in to her room (careful not to step on the creaky spot at the top of the stairs, lest my parents, watching television in the living room, be alerted), retrieve my glasses, and sit on the edge of the bathtub to read by the glow of the night light. I know for certain that I read most of Little Women<\/em> and Heidi<\/em> that way. Then I would have to just as surreptitiously replace my glasses and go back to bed.<\/p>\n

I know that reading is essential for a writer. I know I read more slowly than most people (about thirty pages an hour) and I think I don’t read enough, not as much as I’d like to and certainly not as much as I should, despite my bringing back armloads of books each year from my literary gallivants in Vermont.<\/p>\n

When I drew up The Fiction Fifty<\/a>, the list of titles I’ve chosen for this year of writing seriously, I figured I could keep the pace set by Becky Holmes and read a book a week. I’m behind, of course. I started my fifth title, Aryn Kyle’s The God of Animals<\/em>, this week, the eleventh week of the project. (I read other stuff too, listed at A Year’s Reading<\/a>.) Nevertheless, I was feeling pretty good about my progress.<\/p>\n

Until I discovered Nina Sankovitch, who is reading a book a day<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now that’s <\/em><\/strong>a lot of books!<\/p>\n

*********<\/p>\n