Sometimes I can't believe how fortunate I am. In spite of so many real world considerations, like health and financial circumstances, in some ways I'm in the position I always hoped to be in. I'm able to devote the majority of my energy to doing what I love most: reading and writing. It's just one of those ironies of life, I suppose, that it took becoming ill to be able fulfill my ambitions, but, hey, I'm not going to complain. The only difference is where we have to expand energy not devoted to what we want to be
I've talked a lot about writing in the past, but one of the benefits that I haven't really mentioned is how it has brought back my pleasure in reading. Prior to starting my online writing I was going through a fallow period during which I was having difficulty finding anything of interest to read. I almost felt like there was nothing new left to read.
I was slow to start reading. Even though I could read better then most people my age, it just wasn't something I was interested in. One of the problems was the level of reading expected in school was so basic that I just assumed all books were either along the lines of Dick and Jane or those my parents read, full of small type and no pictures. It wasn't until someone finally had the good sense to introduce me to Paddington Bear by Michael Bond that I discovered books could be of value.
By the time I was seven or eight it was obvious I had outgrown the children's section in the library, so the librarians consented to give me an adult card. It was a different world through those doors to the other side of the library. The bookcases towered over my head, so instead of being on eye level most of the books were well beyond my reach and literally unobtainable.
That didn't matter because at least I had a far greater selection to choose from. From that time on until I was out of high school I read anything and everything: Flaubert, Tolstoy, Joyce, Miller, Kerouac, Durrell (Gerald and Lawrence) Hemingway; pretty much the whole gamut of 19th-century naturalist/realism and 20th-century modernism. From there I moved on into the beats; Ginsberg, Burroughs, Paul Bowles, and all the Algerian expatriates.
Article comments
1 - Avi Abrams
The joy of reading is ten times better than the joy of watching. I tend to rent the movies in hopes of watching them (instead of TV), but in the end both the TV AND the movies are left untouched, with a good book taking all the credit for my good times.
And it is so true, that many writers start to write in hope to write something that they themselves would like to read... I think Tolkien was one of them, and Wordsworth. Same in music, Jeff Lynne started ELO because there was nothing of that sound available. I betcha he liked the results.