One of the comments I often get from people who have read my book ROMAN Reading is “I could never write in my books.” It’s hard to get people to understand the value and pleasure of writing comments, thoughts and reactions in their books. But now I have a book to recommend to them: Marginalia: Readers Writing in Books by H. J. Jackson.
I found this book in the Notre Dame bookstore, and I couldn’t be more excited to read it. From the back cover: Continue reading
In my book ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature, I mention that reading a book is like talking with a neighbor. William Faulkner expresses this idea in the following quote:
The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to friends: the Old Testament, Dickens, Conrad, Cervantes–Don Quixote. I read that every year, as some do the Bible….I’ve read these books so often that I don’t always begin at page one and read on to the end. I just read one scene, or about one character just as you’d meet and talk to a friend for a few minutes.
John at SF Signal reviewed my free ebook ROMAN Reading in post called When in Rome…Do as Elitists Do? I really appreciate the time he took to read the book and write about it. His comments actually illustrate a couple of the elements of ROMAN Reading: Asking questions about what you read, and Naming your experiences.
One of the questions he asks is if the neighborhood analogy is elitist. Here are his thoughts: Continue reading
Stefanie at So Many Books has just posted a review of ROMAN Reading and it’s generating some great comments about marking in books. Here’s one by Whatladder that I particularly like:
My husband claims that his favourite book ever is the copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry I gave him that had all my pencilled notes in it.