When you read a book, you create that tonal bandwidth. You set a tone for yourself, as you're reading it, in which everything exists within the world of your imagination.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I tend to think of the reading of any book as preparation for the next reading of it. There are always intervening books or facts or realizations that put a book in another light and make it different and richer the second or the third time.
Most people - and particularly people whose lives have nothing to do with books at all - are intrigued by the idea that somebody wants to listen to them and get it right.
Books are slow, books are quiet. The Internet is fast and loud.
I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently.
When anything goes digital, let alone something as immaterial as a book, there is a tendency to see it as just in the air to be taken, and to lose the sense that somebody once made it.
The more I like a book, the more slowly I read. this spontaneous talking back to a book is one of the things that makes reading so valuable.
Today we read books 'extensively,' often without sustained focus, and with rare exceptions we read each book only once. We value quantity of reading over quality of reading. We have no choice, if we want to keep up with the broader culture.
Once the words of a book appear onscreen, they are no longer simply themselves; they have become a part of something else. They now occupy the same space, not only as every other digital text, but as every other medium, too.
Once you publish a book, it is out of your control. You cannot dictate how people read it.
Everything that you read is an influence on everything you write, and you want to draw as many elements into your work as you can.
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