Comments on: To Read or Not to Read

By: david i

david i — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 18:50:41 +0000

Hi, Terri. You know, the truly horrible thing about this is that there isn’t as much overlap between the Prose list and Smiley’s…and even if you’ve read a lot of them, Prose thinks we need to go back and read them “closely.”

Anthony Burgess also has a truly quirky list of 99 Novels (he must have the only Great Books list with Ian Fleming on it!):

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/grt99.html

and if you want to make yourself completely nuts, here’s a webpage that is nothing but a list of lists of Great Books

http://www.interleaves.org/~rteeter/greatbks.html

The question really isn’t if you read while you’re working on a novel; it’s whether all this this reading would leave any time whatsoever to write.

By: David Thayer

David Thayer — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 15:29:59 +0000

Terri, I’m firing Lars and hiring you.

By: Terri

Terri — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:50:30 +0000

I’m reading the Prose book and Jane Smiley’s 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, and now I realize how many books I must read. It’s like a summer reading list on steroids.

I’m just glad you’re writing a new book, bruddha. The world needs more of your writing.

By: David Thayer

David Thayer — Tue, 24 Oct 2006 14:30:06 +0000

It’s certainly better than seeing Rick Santorum on the small screen and being influenced by utter lunacy.

By: david i

david i — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 23:46:57 +0000

I’ve also heard fellow writers say that they cannot read while working on a book of their own for fear that Tolstoy or Shakespeare might influence them. I’ve always hoped they would influence me, and I wonder if I would have taken so happily to being a writer if it meant that I couldn’t read for the years it might take to complete a novel.

—Francine Prose
Reading Like a Writer

By: Steve Clackson

Steve Clackson — Mon, 23 Oct 2006 18:18:57 +0000

I posed this awhile back. Some more comments for discussion are here
http://sandstormauthor.blogspot.com/2006/01/do-you-read-when-you-are-writing.html
and here
http://booksinq.blogspot.com/2006/01/most-interesting-question.html