I am going to embark on a new journey as a reader and writer. It is a suggested writer exercise called roject Century. I will read and reflect on 100 books that live in the literary worlds I would like to inhabit. This is a particularly interesting step for me, be cause I am a lapsed reader. Growing up I read with the kind of appetite that could never be filled. I read and re-read books whenever I was not actively in motion. Sometimes even when I was, I figured out how to read when walking, albeit carefully, and I am one of the fortunates who can read in a moving vehicle without danger to my delicate digestive system. The real shift from constant reader to occasion one happened in University. At a time when I was expected to read Big and Important Works, I found I had little time and a diminishing appetite to read beyond the prescribed list, and even that was sometimes more words than my head could chew. And once I was out of the social whirl of school and into the less populated adult word, the lack of constant peers lead me to CBC radio and to television programs, to podcasts and streaming video. While a book can be a great companion, the video monitor is a much chattier one, and I never worked out the trick of being able to read while doing housework. Now that my narrow world includes wee humans, the focus required to read seems a distant memory.
But it's time for something new. I want to start writing properly, and I am a firm believer that you cannot write unless you read. And so it's time to read read read, read myself into a better writer. I will read the kind of books I want someday to write. And so I shall. And this is the place where I get to ponder them, a virtual space to think, however bedraggled my head.
It should be a bumpy ride. Wishing me luck!
