Iris Blasi

Apr 28

“

What you read is important, but not all important. How you read is the main consideration. For if you know how to read, there’s a world of education even in the newspapers, the magazines, on a single billboard or a stray advertising dodger.

The secret of good reading is this: read critically!

” Timeless wisdom from 75+ years ago: How to acquire knowledge. (via explore-blog)

(via explore-blog)

Dec 7

“Reading is seeking; it doesn’t just happen to us. We move our eyes from word to word, we move our hands to turn the pages. I’ve always treated reading like an all-encompassing quest that will never end, a riddle without an answer. But at its most basic level, books are about want. We desire to know — or at least to consume — what has been put down inside the pages. Reading is the act of satiating your own heart.” Rachel Syme, in The Millions’ “Year in Reading”

Sep 7

“Dickens teaches children to love to read.”

Christopher Hitchens, to an 8-year-old girl who asked him what she should read.

(The full list is here.)

May 21

Bonds Forged by Books

“Does the act of reading, at a glance, feel in any way communal? Or does it feel, in fact, quite the opposite? Even members of the most ambitious and tightly-knit book clubs tend to do their actual reading in solitude. … Nevertheless, as you read, your fellow adventurers are out there waiting to meet you, biding their time behind a chance encounter, a well-fated introduction, a tweet, or a blog post, or an otherwise interesting article of prose. You didn’t realize it, but so much mystery, so much anticipation has amassed behind your new friendship, a cosmos-load of potential energy. You didn’t know it — you were too engaged with the mind behind the words — but through all the sentences, the pages, the lovely, lonely hours past, a part of you secretly longed for a flesh-and-blood friend with whom you could share your experience. When you meet your friend, you’ve met an instant confidant. You unburden yourselves on one another, reliving the adventures, revisiting those daunting and glorious experiences you dearly miss, refining and refreshing your perspective in the silver gazing pool of another soul, one that’s triumphed through similar loneliness. Book-bonding is soul-mating, pre-arranged through art.”

—Bryan Basamanowicz, in “From the Library of your Soul-Mate: The Unique Social Bond of Literature,” for The Millions

May 2

On Literary Choices

“Faced with a quantity of books so vast that nearly all of them must remain unknown, how can we escape the conclusion that even a lifetime of reading is utterly in vain? Reading is first and foremost non-reading. Even in the case of the most passionate lifelong readers, the act of picking up and opening a book masks that countergesture that occurs at the same time: the involuntary act of not picking up and not opening all the other books in the universe.”

-Pierre Bayard’s in “How to Talk about Books You Haven’t Read,” pg 6.

Apr 17

“Let me underscore the obvious here: Reading fiction is important. It is a vital means of imagining a life other than our own, which in turn makes us more empathetic beings. Following complex story lines stretches our brains beyond the 140 characters of sound-bite thinking, and staying within the world of a novel gives us the ability to be quiet and alone, two skills that are disappearing faster than the polar icecaps. … The Pulitzer Prize is our best chance as writers and readers and booksellers to celebrate fiction. This was the year we all lost.” Ann Patchett, on the no-prize fiction Pulitzer in “And the Winner Isn’t”

Dec 18

“The books that matter to me—and they are books of all descriptions—are those that galvanize something inside me. I read books to read myself.” Sven Birkerts in The Gutenberg Elegies, Pg. 102

Dec 14

“Reading is everything. Reading makes me feel like I’ve accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. Reading makes me smarter. Reading gives me something to talk about later on. Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it’s a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it’s a way of making contact with someone else’s imagination after a day that’s all too real. Reading is grist. Reading is bliss.” Nora Ephron, in I Feel Bad About My Neck

Dec 2

“I have never fallen in love with a book that I did not love all the more the second time. With each reading, more is revealed. One builds a beloved relationship, adding layers of associative memory and visual impressions. I’m like Gumby, excited to re-enter the atmosphere.” Patti Smith, in this wknd’s NYTBR essay “Read it Again, Sam”

Iris Blasi

Marketing Manager at Open Road Integrated Media. I like books and the people who read them.

Bonds Forged by Books

On Literary Choices