art of reading

Readings: A Ramble

Holidays are for reading. Everything slows on a three-day weekend. It gives us time to read those titles that call to us as we rush past them on an ordinary day. That’s the old reading technology, the kind I love to surround myself with. Then come the blog posts waiting at the bottom of a string of bookmarks in one browser or another. In some respects, the greatest urgency attaches to these. They exist in the ether and might not be there when I want them. Continue Reading
A Writer on Reading & Material Books

Books are the flesh of words. Not long ago I wrote that a material book will love you back, something an electronic book cannot do. Several literal-minded readers chided me, ever so gently, for making a romance out of ink on paper. The chiding was a challenge to hunt up testimony in support of my side. Let me enter into evidence Alberto Manguel’s A Reader on Reading (2010), an eloquent and enthralling excursion into books. He writes of preparing for a lengthy hospital stay. Continue Reading