Turning the Lights On
I feel guilt in the not good enough I carry alongside the not bad enough.
...more
Posts Tagged: reading
Wanted/Needed/Loved: Snail Mail’s Beloved Books
Wherever I go out on tour, I always have a book with me, and another for when I’m finished.
...more
Reading Colum McCann to My Daughter
I think we need to listen closer for the stories that shake us up the most … and then share them and talk about them with the people we love. And the people we don’t.
...more
A Love Letter to Fuckhead
If you’re judging your characters, you’re not doing it right. I’ll always be grateful to [Denis] Johnson for teaching me that.
...more
A Dyslexic’s Guide to Infinity
In my memory, the Learning Support room is always shadowy. Outside, other girls are forever laughing as they amble past.
...moreHow to Make Reading a Habit
You tell yourself you should read more, but are you finding it hard to even pick up a book? Fret not; you’re not alone. Get yourself started one step at a time with some helpful tips from Tomas Laurinavicius at the Huffington Post.
...moreDoes Online Reading Harm Writing Ability?
Reading online content exclusively can harm writing skills, a new study has found. GalleyCat reports that a study of MBA students looked at their reading habits and found those with higher writing scores regularly read academic journals rather than focusing on Internet content from BuzzFeed and Reddit.
...moreKeep Kids Learning, All Summer Long
Chicago libraries have an ambitious plan to give away more than a million children’s books this summer in an effort to combat intellectual regression that occurs in summer months when children aren’t in school. Every branch of the Chicago library is giving away books to children who sign up for the program. Want to keep your […]
...moreWriting for Readers
Readers, at least some of us, read to escape because we are afraid, because we feel separate and isolated, because the decibel at which we sometimes experience the everyday feels like too much. We also read to acquire the fortitude to “go back.” Lynn Steger Strong writes for Catapult on creating reader-based prose.
...moreThe Most Literate Nation
Finland tops the charts for most literate nation, with the United States coming in seventh. A new study looks not just at literacy rates but at literacy behaviors. These behaviors include counting libraries, newspapers, and years of schooling. Ranking nations based on reading assessment only would result in a very different list of top readers.
...moreMindless Clickers
Writing for Nautilus, Paul La Farge argues that it’s not the Internet’s fault we are mindless clickers: There’s no question that digital technology presents challenges to the reading brain, but, seen from a historical perspective, these look like differences of degree, rather than of kind. To the extent that digital reading represents something new, its […]
...moreReading Prevents Insomnia
Picking up a book before heading to bed may stave off insomnia. Van Winkle’s reports that researchers have shown just six minutes of reading reduces stress by 68%, clearing the mind in preparation for sleep.
...moreRead a Book, Get a Free Bus Pass
In Chuj-Napoca, Romania’s second-most populous city, an initiative passed to offer book-reading passengers free bus fare during a week in June. The initiative was started by a local citizen’s suggestion on Facebook in the hopes of encouraging reading on public transportation. The Independent has the story.
...moreRead and Then Read Again
How do we reread and is it necessary? Tim Parks demystifies the art of going back to a text for the third, fourth and fifth time.
...moreWeekly Geekery
Go, to bed. Now. Facebook begrudgingly cedes that they might not have a PhD in You. Literary non-fiction on the edge of technology… old technology that is. No technology can replace reading out loud. Technology to help you with your addiction to technology. Meta. Moderating abuse in online games.
...moreStacks on Stacks
Consumer culture impossibly demands that we acquire possessions ad infinitum while condemning the clutter these objects inevitably produce. Over at Lit Hub, Susan Harlan surrenders to the stack: After all, how does a book find its place? Where does it belong?
...more
My Evenings Reading Alone
For nearly ten years I had lain beside him: the snoring was a blow, but, looking back, it was also a necessary portent, an etch in our story, the fuzzy spot on a picture frame you can’t tell is from the photograph aging or a fingerprint that left its caressing mark on the glass.
...moreWriters Must Read
Writers sometimes forget the importance of reading. Just about everyone who writes started out as a voracious reader, but working on the craft of writing ends up displacing time previously spent reading. Over at Dead Darlings, Kelly Robertson takes a look at the importance of continuing to read: It is only by reading a lot can […]
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Essay: Reading Don Quijote with My Mother
“That’s the anthem I would have sung at my original graduation if the university had stayed open,” my mother said.
...more
The Saturday Rumpus Interview: Tamara Winfrey-Harris
The reality is that there is privilege even within social justice movements.
...moreSeeing What We Read
More banally we may stand at the luggage collection carousel watching endless bags tumble onto the belt. We hold in our minds a shadowy idea of our own bag. Then suddenly it is there and the effort of “visualizing” ceases. Perhaps we realize that the bag is not quite as we remembered it. There are […]
...moreHow to Read in the Modern World
There are many distractions in the modern world like television and listicles. As a result, people aren’t reading in the same way they did a half century ago, opines Oliver Burkeman at the Guardian. All is not lost. Aside from carrying a book around all the time, Burkeman suggests turning reading into a ritual: …such […]
...moreA Life in Books
Often I wouldn’t be able to keep up, like with Dostoevsky’s The Idiot, but it made it feel like a whole new world of books had been opened up to me, dangerous and menacing and completely appealing to my teenage self. A rite of passage, similar to my first time drinking or my first time […]
...morePeople Read Everywhere
Photographer Lawrence Schwartzwald finds people reading just about everywhere. He’s been going around New York City, snapping pictures of people reading books in unlikely places. Slate caught up with Scwartzwald, who explains his fascination with people and their books: You just get a visceral reaction, like writing a great story or reading one for that […]
...more
AWP 2015 Offsite Event: GUTTER TALK
The Rumpus and Fence are proud to present GUTTER TALK, an AWP 2015 offsite event!
...moreLet a Bot Pick a Book for You
If you find it hard to choose a book from among the endless titles that are available, Readgeek is the tool you need. Over at Bustle, Hannah Nelson-Teutsch tested the new online recommendation bot, unexpectedly finding it extremely reliable.
...moreA Place (Not) For Reading
Reading a book is wholly antithetical to the purpose of a bar. The purpose of a bar is to socialize, be it with friends, lovers, potential lovers or complete strangers. Sean Manning is endorsing quite an unpopular position over at The Huffington Post: as romantic as it sounds, bars are good for writing, but not […]
...moreFinish What You Started
But if a novel starts well and descends into trash, then it seems to me that it’s worth continuing to see if it gets better, or to see where the writer went wrong. And if it was bad from page one, then the whole “should I drop it?” issue is secondary. The best way to […]
...more