Post 9
How about reading? How about
Alexie?
Anna Quindlen is an accomplished writer – both fiction
and non-fiction. She’s authored a short
(less than 100 pages!) gem of a book titled How
Reading Changed My Life. We’re big
fans of her insight and artistry.
Following are a few of her observations from this title:
1.
“Books
are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the
journey. They are home."
2.
“In
books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.”
3.
“Those
of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores
the way some people feel about jewelers...”
4.
“How
is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we
come to the world of Pride and Prejudice
and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at
a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in
bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness
in someone else's mind.”
5.
“I
remember the first year after my second child was born, what I can remember of
it at all, as a year of disarray, of overturned glasses of milk, of toys on the
floor, of hours from sunrise to sunset that were horribly busy but filled with
what, at the end of the day, seemed like absolutely nothing at all. What saved
my sanity were books. What saved my sanity was disappearing, if only for
fifteen minutes before I inevitably began to nod off in bed...and as it was for
me when I was young and surrounded by siblings, as it is today when I am
surrounded by children, reading continues to provide an escape from a crowded
house into an imaginary room of one's own.”
6.
“While
we pay lip service to the virtues of reading, the truth is that there is still
in our culture something that suspects those who read too much, whatever
reading too much means, of being lazy, aimless dreamers, people who need to
grow up and come outside to where real life is, who think themselves superior
in their separateness.”
Once you’ve
completed The Absolutely True Diary of a
Part-Time Indian, if you find yourself in any of Quindlen’s reactions to
reading, identify which one seems to speak of you and detail your response to
this work. If not, share your reaction
to reading and, especially, to your reading of Alexie’s work. As always, support your response with details…and
be honest…please!
With the quotes, there are a few that speak to me about reading, but they don’t show completely how I feel about it. When I read, it’s like I’m watching a different world through another person’s eyes. Part-time Indian is probably one of the most realistic books I’ve read, so when I was reading it the pictures that I saw in my mind were so vivid I felt like I was there, like I was living Junior’s life. The only thing the pictures throughout the book help do was make the life/world I was watching/living while reading real. Like on pages 71 and 117, the pictures with Eugene and Gordy on them, I didn’t even need to imagine what they looked like after seeing those drawings, like I do most of the time when reading. Every time there was a moment, a scene, or whatever you want to call it with those to characters in it, I saw them almost as clear as if they were actually in front of me. I have something like that happen for pretty much every book I read, but this one was a bit different. It was as if I was actually there as the book went along a most of the time I was reading the book. That for me is what happens when I’m reading, and truthfully how I feel about it most of the time.
ReplyDeleteThe quote that I find extremely true and fits my definition of reading, is “In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.” To me this quote means that there are fiction books that when you read them they put you into other fantastical worlds that you could have never dreamed. Then on the other hand, there are non-fiction books that transport you back in time to a place you have only heard about in textbooks or movies. These books teach you things that you would have never known unless you read that exact book. It teaches you about your own world that you live in. They can also take you to foreign countries and exotic locations that you may have never visited, but you can learn about them and it feels like you were actually in Argentina, China, Madagascar, etc. There is also one other quote that really represents reading for me, and that is “Those of us who read because we love it more than anything, who feel about bookstores the way some people feel about jewelers...” When some people walk into a jewelry store, they can’t help themselves from gawking at all the huge diamonds and shiny gold rings. When people that love to read books go to a bookstore, they run over to books that they read before to revisit their accomplishments of reading them, to classics that everyone has heard of, and to ones that to them seem like a $50,000 dollar ring at the jewelers. If you really enjoy reading that is how you should feel when you walk into a bookstore.
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