Authors Electric

  Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose This book was recommended to me by the director of a creative writing program here in Amsterdam. She thought it might help me reacquaint myself with the various craft terms I’d need to know when I start teaching in the spring. Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose turned out to be so much more. As a reader, it crystallized for me the reason I love books.  As a writer, it offered real life tips. And as a wannabe teacher, it gives me the courage to think I’ll make it someday. on reading For many of us, reading has become a chore. We skim through reports, emails, the news feed hoping to digest as much information as quickly as we can. And even when we read for pleasure, we might skip pages and paragraphs to cut to the chase, find out whodunit, answer the who-what-when questions in our mind. But when we were kids, reading was different. As Francine Prose reminds us:   "We all begin as close readers. Even before we ...

No, for heaven's sake, I don't mean this: And no, Lev Butts, I don't mean this: This   is the hot sexy thing with your lips: That's right,  move  'em when you read! I don't know when exactly I started to question my own reading speed...or my habit of sounding the words in my head, savoring rhythms and diction. Nor can I recall when I first felt ashamed at helplessly reading some sections aloud. I knew that others read far more quickly than I -- some with perfect recall. I read a book on speed reading not long after college, stung by a stranger's cruel remark about my lipful reading style. I recall trying to master the basic principles: not sounding the words...silently ingesting lines, then paragraphs of type. I never entirely abandoned my efforts or enjoyed any real success. Reading in this fashion was pleasureless to me, while reading my own way brought equal measures of pleasure and shame. Ah, but I remember my emancipation after r...