The advice that many writers give to those who would be authors is simple: read. In order to be able to write, you need to learn what good writing looks like. Fashions change over time, but good writing is just good thinking.
I’ve decided to take one of the many reading challenges you find online at the beginning of the year. Various websites suggest that such “contests” are better than resolutions that fall by the wayside by the beginning of February. For me, I don’t need a contest to make me read, but these contests may make you read things you otherwise wouldn’t.
One of the categories in my contest is a book that you’ve read before. If a book is far enough in my past, the details become hazy. I hate to admit it, but I’ve even read books that I remember nothing about. My details of Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov are one such victim.
I picked this book up the first week of the year. It is a big book and I’m a slow reader. It is not paced for the present, action-packed audience. Indeed, The Brothers Karamazov is classified as a philosophical novel. I started to write such a novel once only to have the son-in-law of an established writer tell me, “nobody reads stuff like that anymore.” The damage thoughtless words can cause.
I can’t pretend I’m flying through Dostoyevsky. Forty pages in and the only thing that had happened is that the family gathered at a monastery to talk. Detail after elaborate detail, laden with deep meaning, is spoon-fed to the curious reader. I do recall that the book is great. It’s just that I can’t remember why.
With well over 600 pages to go, I might question my resolve from time to time. I tend to read multiple books at once. I try to keep one non-fiction title going while tackling two or three fictional, depending on the mood.
I may not be approaching this correctly, but the challenge is to read different categories of books and I am eager to please. I can’t help but think that by the end I will have learned a thing or two about writing as well.
Comments
Post a Comment