This blog contains many posts about books, reading and public libraries. Some articles feature writers' words on these topics of interest; L. M. Montgomery and the compulsion to read and write is just one example.
I recently came across some relevant quotations from the writer Doris Lessing. Although her words were new to me, they are similar to some material that was already on here.
This is interesting:
“I didn't go to school much, so I taught myself what I knew from reading.”
Isaac Asimov said something similar, and being mostly self-taught also applies to me.
Doris Lessing is yet another writer who has nothing but praise for public libraries and promotes the positive effects of reading:
“A public library is the most democratic thing in the world. What can be found there has undone dictators and tyrants: demagogues can persecute writers and tell them what to write as much as they like, but they cannot vanish what has been written in the past, though they try often enough...People who love literature have at least part of their minds immune from indoctrination. If you read, you can learn to think for yourself.”
This is interesting in the context of the article about cults that restrict their members' reading.
In her novel The Golden Notebook, Doris Lessing advises readers to be very selective when deciding what to read:
“There is only one way to read, which is to browse in libraries and bookshops, picking up books that attract you, reading only those, dropping them when they bore you, skipping the parts that drag—and never, never reading anything because you feel you ought, or because it is part of a trend or a movement.“
I mentioned skipping some off-putting material in the final article about Elizabeth Goudge's Valerians.
I mentioned browsing the shelves as a way to find something good to read in the article about the reader's dilemma of so many books, so little time.
There is no harm in just taking a quick look at recommended and fashionable books though: our radar will soon tell us whether or not a book is worth reading!
Doris Lessing with some books:
