Tag: reading the original

The ‘Case for Re-reading’…

Reading this article has gifted me with a fantastic reading list. I’ve read maybe four books on the list, a couple that are also on my shelves and that are also on my re-reading list.

I came across this website only recently and haven’t explored the whole of it yet. The links in the article below are giving me a lot of food for thought.

https://aworkinglibrary.com/writing/case-for-rereading

When Mandy Brown mentioned the novel I had just started to re-read–The Peripheral by William Gibson–I felt I was finally in the right reading group.

Though maybe only a parallel group to the one being written about, I still feel like this writer is reading stuff I’m reading, and thinking along the similar lines I’m thinking. I feel relationship for the first time in a long while.

Reading isn’t an escape—it’s a reckoning.

Rereading is training, practice for remaking and unmaking—and, yes, razing—the world. Rereading draws your best thoughts close, keeps them at the ready, prepares you to think thoughts with them, prepares you to act with them at hand. Your favorite reads are your armor and your weapons and your shelter all in one. What have you gathered about you? What has taken root in your mind? What thoughts are you thinking with?

from the Case for Re-reading by Mandy Brown

Cory Doctorow: Proud to be a Blockhead

Under the above title was going to be a link to Doctorow’s post of that name, but I don’t think so. Not yet. The link I pasted turned into a wall of text, virtually unreadable. So, again, this post will be the ‘About Blogging’ … how often already this year have I tagged a post that way?

Because what happens usually when I click on a Share Button, the title of the article/post to be shared and its URL are copied and saved on a virtual clipboard. Then, when I click and copy on a place in my post of my choosing ... usually after I’ve introduced the article/post as I intended to do here … the article/post will paste into the position directly under the title and shove the intro to the bottom, or into a never-never land where it can never again be found. (Yes, that is a hint to myself to save a draft though I’m not sure if that’ll work.)

I can but give it all another go.

Lol, this is a straight-out quote that reverberates in my head … from one of my own fictions, and when I say or think those words, I always feel like I’m hovering over Tardi Mack (trucker and surfer starring in Mongrel [published] and Meld [still being edited]) saying it while he is giving x y or z problem another go.

Intro

I’m proud to be a blockhead the same as Doctorow. Quoting from Doctorow’s article … “the most laughably false statement about writing ever uttered is Samuel Johnson’s notorious “No man but a blockhead ever wrote but for money”: … Yep. I’m definitely a blockhead.

There’s so much in this article that resonates with me, that I relate to, the whole article is rich with quotes about ‘making art’, creative endeavors of all kinds, how badly musicians are paid, and that by Spotify that people tell me I ought to be ashamed of not using them in preference to Apple Music, for example. All of them guilty of the same practices?

Why it’s important to read and read lots, how writing is a way of thinking, a way of working stuff out. While Doctorow is afraid his luck will run out in relation to his writing career, I’m often afraid that the internet will fall over and how easy that will be when it does, with all the links in the chain from me here typing this to you opening WordPress or your mail service, and reading. And there’s much more.

So I thought you might as well read the original … https://pluralistic.net/2024/12/21/blockheads-r-us/