Daniel Pennac: The 10 Inalienable Rights of the Reader

 Book Notes  Tagged with: ,
Jan 062015
 
  1. The right not to read
  2. The right to skip
  3. The right not to finish a book
  4. The right to re-read
  5. The right to read anything
  6. The right to “Bovary-ism,” a textually transmitted disease (the right to mistake a book for real life)
  7. The right to read anywhere
  8. The right to dip in
  9. The right to read out loud
  10. The right to be silent

Here are Terry’s 10 additional inalienable rights for readers:

  1. The Right to Mark: You have the right to contribute marginalia and doodles (as long as you own the book)
  2. The Right to be Wishy-Washy: You have the right to be capricious, serendipitous, or whimsical in your reading
  3. The Right of Stacks: You have the right to read multiple things at one time and create whatever stacks work for you
  4. The Right of Media: You have the right not to discriminate between paper and electronic books. But not audio books: this is not reading. Sorry.
  5. The Right of Choice: You have the right to choose my own books and not be compelled by the best intentions (gifts) of others
  6. The Right of Security Blankets: the right to have a book with me at all times
  7. The Right to Not Justify: the right not to have read all the books in my library nor does this need justification
  8. The Right to List: The right to have a list of books-to-read than an average human lifespan would allow
  9. The Right to Have a Favourite Child: The right to love one genre of book more than another (the right to read things you enjoy)
  10. The Right to Masochistic Reading: The right to read challenging hard books even if you do not enjoy them

Samuel Taylor Coleridge: On Readers

 Quotes  Tagged with:
Oct 202014
 

Readers may be divided into four classes:

  1. Sponges, who absorb all that they read and return it in nearly the same state, only a little dirtied.
  2. Sand-glasses, who retain nothing and are content to get through a book for the sake of getting through the time.
  3. Strain-bags, who retain merely the dregs of what they read.
  4. Mogul diamonds, equally rare and valuable, who profit by what they read, and enable others to profit by it also.

Francis Bacon: Read not to contradict …

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Oct 082013
 

Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested: that is, some books are to be read only in parts, others to be read, but not curiously, and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.