Booking through Thursday is a weekly book related meme where each blogger answers the same question.
This week’s question: I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:
“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.”
To what extent does this describe you?
Wow. This is a powerful quote! If I’m understanding it correctly, it is commenting on the fact that to read is an escape – for good or bad. This completely describes my reading! My couple of hours of reading a night are my solace, my coming together at the end of the day. Where during the day, I am worrying about the past and future, my reading time allows me to be in whatever moment the story allows. I am content to just be – a perfect time to relax. In terms of ‘casting a vote’, I agree that this is also true of me. I am truly picky about what I read and each choice of a new book is usually a contemplative task for me.
What are your thoughts on this quote?
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I think that there should have been an easier way to word it. That quote confused the hell out of me. Here’s Mine
I do not use reading as an escape. My answer: http://www.rundpinne.com/2010/02/booking-through-thursday-why-i-read.html