Tuesday again… this time I’m prompt. I actually have to say I’ve thought a lot about this confession so let’s get started.
Dear reader:
That sounds funny addressing you as reader when my confession today is about me as a reader. Yesterday I was reading something – I don’t recall what exactly when this came to me as I read a number of articles and blogs yesterday, but I thought back over my own reading past experiences and realized I have a problem.
All right, I have a number of problems so don’t go there. The problem I’m confessing is my reading habits. If I were looking at what I read as a menu of food I eat, I would be totally deficient in some vitamins and minerals.
My own book shelves basically can be divided into three sections - poetry/poetics, baseball, political - biographical. Actually I have a number of biographical that are linked to poetry as well.
I don’t as a rule read novels. Occasionally I’ve read a science fiction. When I was younger I read fiction and a fair amount of historical fiction but as I grew older most of my reading had a more direct purpose.
I confess this is not a totally new revelation to me, but thinking at in the context of contributing to some kind of deficiency is quite frankly a new and startling insight or self discovery. And here is the rub… a part of me says at my age why care? If given the choice what to sit down and read this very afternoon I would likely not stray from the comfort of my well worn path. Yet, there is this part of me that says perhaps I could be a better, a stronger writer if I opened myself to broader tastes in reading. It’s a thought.
I’ll let you know where this leads, if anywhere.
Dear reader:
That sounds funny addressing you as reader when my confession today is about me as a reader. Yesterday I was reading something – I don’t recall what exactly when this came to me as I read a number of articles and blogs yesterday, but I thought back over my own reading past experiences and realized I have a problem.
All right, I have a number of problems so don’t go there. The problem I’m confessing is my reading habits. If I were looking at what I read as a menu of food I eat, I would be totally deficient in some vitamins and minerals.
My own book shelves basically can be divided into three sections - poetry/poetics, baseball, political - biographical. Actually I have a number of biographical that are linked to poetry as well.
I don’t as a rule read novels. Occasionally I’ve read a science fiction. When I was younger I read fiction and a fair amount of historical fiction but as I grew older most of my reading had a more direct purpose.
I confess this is not a totally new revelation to me, but thinking at in the context of contributing to some kind of deficiency is quite frankly a new and startling insight or self discovery. And here is the rub… a part of me says at my age why care? If given the choice what to sit down and read this very afternoon I would likely not stray from the comfort of my well worn path. Yet, there is this part of me that says perhaps I could be a better, a stronger writer if I opened myself to broader tastes in reading. It’s a thought.
I’ll let you know where this leads, if anywhere.
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