Pamela -
When I hear someone say "I never read fiction," I'm a little saddened.
It comes to my ears like "I never look at art." When one starts
getting all hairy-chested about the greater value of non-fiction over
make-believe, please be reminded of the books you pull off your shelf
to make room for new ones.
Well put. I've always held that Fiction often tells more Truth than
non-Fiction... Important, fundamental truths about Life, the Universe
and Everything... but then so does Poetry...
Not all non-fiction is dated however... as we still read Plato or
Archimedes or Lau Tzu or Sun Tzu or Sappho or Galileo with great
interest and delight and relevance.
Thanks for the reference to Woods "How Fiction Works".
I love (good) books on writing. My current fave is "Mark my Words", a
collection of quotes of Mark Twain on Writing. Another favorite is
Stephen King's "On Writing".
Writing (much less reading) threatens to become a lost art. My 30ish
daughters still write (and read) but few of their peers do. They were
born before the VHS tape and suffered under my archaic sense that they
should not have TV in the house... They now read (and write and draw
and make things) while their young men sit in front of a tube (like I am
now) watching tiny sports-heroes run up and down courts/fields or
playing computer-games. At least the young men also play musical
instruments in front of audiences sometimes... and they can really kick
my ass at Guitar Hero.
Also realize that some of us hairy-chested bibliophiles don't bother to
pull books off our shelves, we just build new ones and then when one
room is lined with books we add on another room and fill *that* with
shelves and fill those with books!
I'm currently building a 236 sq ft sunroom on the south of my house
with about 100 linear feet of wall/window space. 40 of those linear
feet are heat-mass wall, but I fear they will be covered with
books/shelves before the winter is out, and by next winter, probably the
window bays will be filled with books too... mediocre insulation, poor
heat mass and lousy windows, books are...
I'm also putting in an airtight stove to make up for the inefficiencies
of the book-laden windows/walls... and if I play my cards right the
whole system becomes self-limiting as I burn some of those egregious
books... My estimate is that I could probably go through 2 cords in a
winter... if my wife keeps bringing them home as fast as she has been
for 10 years or more now. I can't read them as fast as she brings them
home but I'll bet I *can* burn them that fast! No more hauling firewood
for me! The Pulp Mill won't pay firewood prices, so why not?
- Steve
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