I'm not in the habit of quoting Britany Spears. (I'm not even sure if that's how you spell her name and perfectionist that I am, I'm not even bothering to look it up.) In any event, I did do it again, I bought another book. Here I was accompanying TK to Landmark to buy a "I love you" card when I passed Vikram Seth's An Equal Music sitting pretty on the showcase. Now RM has been talking about this book for ages. Needless to say, it was rushed over to the billing counter and ended up in my book collection. I started reading the book that night... without really understanding a thing.
Before I learned to read, I used to sit in my dad's rocking chair with my favorite Noddy and his friends book, which I could recite from memory as I turned the pages. When I thought somebody was listening, I'd shout "I'm reading, I'm reading." Nothing has changed since then, only now I'm shouting, "I'm comprehending, I'm comprehending."
I can no longer read with patience or with any critical faculty; in fact, I can no longer read a book from cover to cover. I continue checking out books because I like the titles, and I continue racing home with them, fanning through the pages and waiting for wisdom to poke me in the eye. I read a book pacing the floor or eating a meal, seizing on an zippy quotation to transcribe into this notebook, somehow convinced that if I write it down, I not only understand it but came up with it myself
This is taken from Instant Karma a novel by Mark Swartz. Good stuff...it's written as the diary of an anarchist bibliophile who is plotting to blow up the Harold Washington Library Center, in Chicago. "Burning the books will liberate them", he believes. Footnotes and references abound. More excerpts later if I feel like it!!!
Before I learned to read, I used to sit in my dad's rocking chair with my favorite Noddy and his friends book, which I could recite from memory as I turned the pages. When I thought somebody was listening, I'd shout "I'm reading, I'm reading." Nothing has changed since then, only now I'm shouting, "I'm comprehending, I'm comprehending."
I can no longer read with patience or with any critical faculty; in fact, I can no longer read a book from cover to cover. I continue checking out books because I like the titles, and I continue racing home with them, fanning through the pages and waiting for wisdom to poke me in the eye. I read a book pacing the floor or eating a meal, seizing on an zippy quotation to transcribe into this notebook, somehow convinced that if I write it down, I not only understand it but came up with it myself
This is taken from Instant Karma a novel by Mark Swartz. Good stuff...it's written as the diary of an anarchist bibliophile who is plotting to blow up the Harold Washington Library Center, in Chicago. "Burning the books will liberate them", he believes. Footnotes and references abound. More excerpts later if I feel like it!!!
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