“Do you like to read?” Years ago, I was first asked that question by a member of a New York book club I was visiting via phone. Since it was back in 2009, they may have read my first Shaker book, The Outsider, or it might have been Angel Sister. one of my books that has been a popular book club choice. I don’t remember which book. I didn’t write that down in the post I’m resharing bits of from over 15 years ago. I just wrote down the question the reader asked.
Since then, I’ve visited or talked via electronic means to many other book clubs. Talking books with people who love reading is always interesting and fun. I’m pleased, and sometimes a little surprised, when a book club chooses one of my books to read. And honored too that they would decide to discuss my book and talk about my characters as if they were real people somewhere actually living the story I wrote.
The first time, at a different book club where I was able to meet with them in person, one of the readers talked about one of my characters as if she wondered what had happened to him after the story ended. That made me realize that my character had become real for her. I’ve had plenty of characters from books I’ve read who became real for me and continued to live in my mind while I thought about what they did or didn’t do.
Back to the question asked then and often at other book clubs or book talks since. “Do you like to read?” Sometimes the question is changed a little to “What do you like to read?” The first question is easy and I can answer it with my own question. “Don’t all writers like to read?” I can’t imagine being a writer if I hadn’t been entranced by words and stories before I stepped out on the writing road. So yes, I love to read. I feel deprived when life keeps me too busy to read as much as I want.
I’m one of those people whose eyes seek out words, on a cereal box or toothpaste tube or billboards along the highway if that’s all that is at hand. Or these days on a phone that can always have a book waiting for you.
Words are powerful. In the right hands, they can come together to tell unforgettable stories, inspire a generation, make you buy something you don’t need, or perhaps capture your heart as this reviewer said about my book, River to Redemption.
And if you string enough words together you have a book – a story to be shared with readers. I like sharing my stories with readers, but I also like reading other writers’ stories. I have a harder time answering the second question of what I like to read. At least in specific titles. I have read so many wonderful books that I have a hard time pulling out just a few favorites. I like mysteries. I like family sagas. I like historical stories. I like almost any well written story that introduces me to characters I can wonder about after I read the last page.
Reading fills my creative reservoir. When I’m researching and reading history books, whispers of stories bounce around inside my head. What if my character did this? What if he or she did that? When I read fiction, I might not be gathering ideas for a new story, but I’m absorbing the rhythm not only of the words but also of the characters’ lives. And that makes me a better writer when I do sit down to invent my next story.
So in honor of book club members everywhere who love reading so much they not only assign themselves a book to read every month, they come together to say what they liked or didn’t like about the book, here are some quotes about books and reading.
- Anyone who says they have only one life to live must not know how to read a book. ~Author Unknown (I like the idea behind this quote!)
- A good book has no ending. ~R.D. Cumming
- Books are the quietest and most constant of friends; they are the most accessible and wisest of counselors, and the most patient of teachers. ~Charles W. Eliot
- Books are the bees which carry the quickening pollen from one to another mind. ~James Russell Lowell
- If you have never said “Excuse me” to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time. ~Sherri Chasin Calvo
- These are not books, lumps of lifeless paper, but minds alive on the shelves. From each of them goes out its own voice… and just as the touch of a button on our set will fill the room with music, so by taking down one of these volumes and opening it, one can call into range the voice of a man far distant in time and space, and hear him speaking to us, mind to mind, heart to heart. ~Gilbert Highet
One of my goals for the year when I first wrote about answering this question was to gift myself with a little extra time for reading. And each year since I’ve had a similar goal along with writing a new story myself.
While I’ve never tried to read a physical book while walking so that I might say excuse me to a parking meter, I do “read” audio books now while I’m doing chores around the house. It has let me “read” many more books this year while my hands were busy with routine chores. But I still like having some moments each day to hold a book in my hands and see those words in front of my eyes that bring a story to life in my head.
So, are you or have you ever been in a book club or made a goal of reading more each day when a New Year came to call?