Finally finished Vanity Fair. Top read. Am considering working my way through some of the heavier classics over Winter. Les Miserables and War and Peace, in the excellent Penguin 'Classics' edition, are currently under consideration.
Meanwhile, I'm going to whip through what I think is the fourteenth Rebus/Rankin novel: Fleshmarket Close. The very good reason that I try not to start on novels that form part of a series is that I cannot rest until I've read them all. Bit sad really.
A couple of wonderful pieces in the Guardian Review on Saturday. I always check it out hopefully and am often disappointed, not caring at all for what's in there. This week there was hope, however.
Philip Pullman wrote excellently (as ever) on reading as a democratic process. He suggests that theocracies (of both the religious and secular kind) are opposed to such a practice and "don't know how to read" whilst "democracies do". Democracies allow a multiplicity of response in readers whilst theocracies, according to Pullman, prescribe only one kind of response (that supports the particular theocracy's objectives.) "The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic" in that we can choose how and when we read, and what we make of what we read:
And we are active about the process. We are in charge of the time, for example. We can choose when to read; we don't have to wait for a timetabled opportunity to open the covers; we can read in the middle of the night, or over breakfast, or during a long summer's evening. And we're in charge of the place where the reading happens; we're not anchored to a piece of unwieldy technology, or required to be present in a particular building along with several hundred other people. We can read in bed, or at the bus stop, or (as I used to do when I was younger and more agile) up a tree.
Nor do we have to read it in a way determined by someone else. We can skim, or we can read it slowly; we can read every word, or we can skip long passages; we can read it in the order in which it presents itself, or we can read it in any order we please; we can look at the last page first, or decide to wait for it; we can put the book down and reflect, or we can go to the library and check what it claims to be fact against another authority; we can assent, or we can disagree.
I want to read up a tree!
And then Simon Schama on art's ability to represent the complexity of existence.
Art, at its most powerful, is a prescription for unease; a touch of giddy disorientation; a buzzing in the brain.
Meanwhile, I'm going to whip through what I think is the fourteenth Rebus/Rankin novel: Fleshmarket Close. The very good reason that I try not to start on novels that form part of a series is that I cannot rest until I've read them all. Bit sad really.
A couple of wonderful pieces in the Guardian Review on Saturday. I always check it out hopefully and am often disappointed, not caring at all for what's in there. This week there was hope, however.
Philip Pullman wrote excellently (as ever) on reading as a democratic process. He suggests that theocracies (of both the religious and secular kind) are opposed to such a practice and "don't know how to read" whilst "democracies do". Democracies allow a multiplicity of response in readers whilst theocracies, according to Pullman, prescribe only one kind of response (that supports the particular theocracy's objectives.) "The act of true reading is in its very essence democratic" in that we can choose how and when we read, and what we make of what we read:
And we are active about the process. We are in charge of the time, for example. We can choose when to read; we don't have to wait for a timetabled opportunity to open the covers; we can read in the middle of the night, or over breakfast, or during a long summer's evening. And we're in charge of the place where the reading happens; we're not anchored to a piece of unwieldy technology, or required to be present in a particular building along with several hundred other people. We can read in bed, or at the bus stop, or (as I used to do when I was younger and more agile) up a tree.
Nor do we have to read it in a way determined by someone else. We can skim, or we can read it slowly; we can read every word, or we can skip long passages; we can read it in the order in which it presents itself, or we can read it in any order we please; we can look at the last page first, or decide to wait for it; we can put the book down and reflect, or we can go to the library and check what it claims to be fact against another authority; we can assent, or we can disagree.
I want to read up a tree!
And then Simon Schama on art's ability to represent the complexity of existence.
Art, at its most powerful, is a prescription for unease; a touch of giddy disorientation; a buzzing in the brain.
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