I'm signed up to take a writing course in a couple of months. Pre-course homework for the standby-to-work-your-butt-off weekend includes a reading list, and a kicker: Do not read the works just once.
Okay, I think, if that's what I gotta do.
By nature, I am a read-a-book-once person. I am a defiler, debaser, dog-earer, write-in-the-margins-er, underliner sort of reader, so that I don't have to read a work twice. When I find a gem, I want to be able to go back directly to it, you know, without having to dig up the whole bloody garden again to find a potato for dinner, when the withered plant above the spud tells a person exactly where to dig. You know? There is an aspect of reading that is work. I, generally, work real hard to avoid work. And where I use the dog-ears and underlines most is in history books, memoirs, biographies. There it is selected raindrops of history out of a downpour I seek to mark a trail back to. Works of fiction are different, and I don't mark them for facts. I, in the past, have marked phrases and ways to use the senses in narration or dialogue. Any rate, that was me before.
Currently, I am about half way through my second pass through my reading list, and I am amazed at what I am getting from the second labor on the same works. It's like the first reading, someone opened the shutters on windows covered for months. The windows had accumulated so much mung, however, all I could tell was whether it was day or night out. The second reading was like looking through the window after a power washer blasted the scum away. Lo! I could see trees and flowers and a humming bird at the feeder.
Okay, I think, if that's what I gotta do.
By nature, I am a read-a-book-once person. I am a defiler, debaser, dog-earer, write-in-the-margins-er, underliner sort of reader, so that I don't have to read a work twice. When I find a gem, I want to be able to go back directly to it, you know, without having to dig up the whole bloody garden again to find a potato for dinner, when the withered plant above the spud tells a person exactly where to dig. You know? There is an aspect of reading that is work. I, generally, work real hard to avoid work. And where I use the dog-ears and underlines most is in history books, memoirs, biographies. There it is selected raindrops of history out of a downpour I seek to mark a trail back to. Works of fiction are different, and I don't mark them for facts. I, in the past, have marked phrases and ways to use the senses in narration or dialogue. Any rate, that was me before.
Currently, I am about half way through my second pass through my reading list, and I am amazed at what I am getting from the second labor on the same works. It's like the first reading, someone opened the shutters on windows covered for months. The windows had accumulated so much mung, however, all I could tell was whether it was day or night out. The second reading was like looking through the window after a power washer blasted the scum away. Lo! I could see trees and flowers and a humming bird at the feeder.
Any rate, you get the point. Reading it a second time, I found so much more.
Along with reading from my list, I recently completed "The Invention of Wings." I think it is a five star work. I really admire the character development. So much so that when I got close to the end of the book, I didn't care if it ended or not. I almost didn't finish it, to find out how it ended. I was so pleased with the characters, I wanted them to just stay there forever, suspended in museum jars filled preservative, protected from the words "THE END."
It will be a couple of months before I read "Invention of Wings" a second time, but it is at the top of my own list of "Read a Second Time" books.