emily stoddard furrow

Jan. 20, 2012 at 9:54am View comments

reading

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Perhaps the ‘I don’t have time to read’ line is just a cover. A way that people excuse themselves from the uncomfortable truth that they do, in fact, have time but that they would rather do something other than read with that time (such as pretending to be a wood-elf). We exalt reading as ‘good’ like exercise and vegetables and so we are always making excuses as to why we avoid it.

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In the Land of the Non-Reader « The Bygone Bureau

I’ve been reading much more lately and wondering about this excuse as well. Elsewhere in this post, the writer talks about reading in terms of empathy and new ideas. The irony for me has been that the more I read, the less alone I feel. Especially after days when I feel like I’ve been pitching ideas and concepts and language to varying degrees of success, there’s nothing like Jane Hirshfield or Henry David Thoreau or Virginia Woolf to convince me I’m not crazy and then challenge me to dig even deeper.