#reading

Your understanding and interpretation of [a novel] is undoubtedly unique…and that is the real beauty of the relationship that joins readers, books and writers together in a literary trinity—a bookish triumvirate. ↗

— Briar Kit Esme

#writing #beauty

There's a difference between preferring books to parties and preferring sixteen cats to seeing the light of day. ↗

— Lauren Morrill

#introverts #reading #humor

If you cannot judge a book by its cover, surely we should not judge an author by one book alone? ↗

— E.A. Bucchianeri

#authors #book #book-cover #books #criticism

Reading a novel after reading semiotic theory was like jogging empty-handed after jogging with hand weights. What exquisite guilt she felt, wickedly enjoying narrative! Madeleine felt safe with a nineteenth century novel. There were going to be people in it. Something was going to happen to them in a place resembling the world. Then too there were lots of weddings in Wharton and Austen. There were all kinds of irresistible gloomy men. ↗

— Jeffrey Eugenides

#literary-criticism #literary-theory #narrative #nineteenth-century #novels

If you've ever read one of those articles that asks notable people to list their favorite books, you may have been impressed or daunted to see them pick Proust or Thomas Mann or James Joyce. You might even feel sheepish about the fact that you reread Pride and Prejudice or The Lord of the Rings, or The Catcher in the Rye or Gone With the Wind every couple of years with some much pleasure. Perhaps, like me, you're even a little suspicious of their claims, because we all know that the books we've loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly - or the ones we'd most like other people to think we read over and over again. ↗

— Laura Miller

#lit #reading #love

My reading list grows exponentially. Every time I read a book, it'll mention three other books I feel I have to read. It's like a particularly relentless series of pop-up ads. ↗

— A.J. Jacobs

#reading #humor

It is both relaxing and invigorating to occasionally set aside the worries of life, seek the company of a friendly book...from the reading of 'good books' there comes a richness of life that can be obtained in no other way. ↗

— Gordon B. Hinckley

#reading #life

I was there to get a Ph.D. in English literature. That's not true. I was there to read a lot of books and to discuss them with bright, insightful, book-loving people, an expectation that I pretty quickly learned was about as silly as it could be. Certainly there were other people who loved books, I'm sure there were, but whoever had notified them ahead of time that loving books was not the point, was, in fact, a hopelessly counterproductive and naive approach to the study of literature, neglected to notify me. It turned out that the point was to dissect a book like a fetal pig in biology class or to break its back with a single sentence or to bust it open like a milkweek pod and say, "See? All along it was only fluff," and then scatter it into oblivion with one tiny breath. ↗

— Marisa de los Santos

#reading #love

I think they assign things to students which are way over their heads, which destroy your love of reading, rather than leading you to it. I don't understand that. Gosh. ↗

— Charles M. Schulz

#reading #school #love

Some of the best friends we have are books. Why? Well, they belong usually to our relaxed armchair hours. They come only if chosen; hence they suit the mood or the taste, whether for humor, fantasy, adventure or mystery. In a trice they can take us with them to far places and other times. Best of all, they don't talk back or force themselves upon us, but, like patient, loving friends, wait until we give them our attention. And always, they are as near as our bookshelf when we need them. ↗

— Esther Baldwin York

#reading #humor