I like what Steve Hultquist had to say in an earlier post about reading creating connections. I think that communicating in general is all about connections — helping us understand other people, the world around us, ourselves; and reading is the most intimate of communications, the conversation between a writer and a reader. I think that Neil Rosen says some things about this in his writing book; but it’s certainly something I talk about in Open Your Heart with Reading:
“Library scholar Louise Glenn (…) has suggested that readers in fact create their own reading experience. ‘Findings,’ she reports, ‘indicated that readers played an important role in the reading experience, with the majority of readers identifying the existence of a creative partnership between the reader and the writer.’”
It’s that partnership, that relationship, that is exciting, because it provides connection between two people, two worlds, two times … ideas and images fizzing through the pages and between two minds.
If that isn’t intimate, I don’t know what is!
Jeannette Cézanne
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Posted by: — jcezanne
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What great stuff! I think reader and book definitely create something greater than the sum of the parts, particularly with a well-written book that somehow, magically, helps make that happen.
And to respond to an earlier message, what do I read? Anything and everything! I just finished a Dean Koontz novel, and before that the Memory Keeper’s Daughter by Kim Edwards….
Comment by dreamtime — September 27, 2007 @ 11:40 pm
YEah, I’ll second the “anything” part. I touch on that in the book, too: backs of cereal boxes, ads on the subway, if there are words, I’ll read it.
When I asked our own Carolyn Haley why she reads, she responded, “I can’t not read!” And my all-time favorite mystery author Phil Rickman responded with, “Why do I read? Why do I breathe?” That says it for me.
We should ask Carolyn for her favorite auhors, by the way; she has a list that broadened *my* reading horizons. And she recently interviewed a great one; perhaps she’d like to share?
In the meantime, I found a book by Frances Fyfield at a library sale this past summer and am reading it now — quite different, and really excellent.
Jeannette
www.JeannetteCezanne.com
Comment by jcezanne — September 28, 2007 @ 7:46 am
….Frances Fyfield? I’ll have to check that out…but first, I have what I just know will be a great book on gardening to get to to first…!
Comment by Meg — September 29, 2007 @ 10:52 pm