Agreed - I find soany good books just by exploring. But that's the benefit of their being so much great literature - in any genre, there are great books to read.
I confess that most of what I read these days is in the genres that I write. But when I was still teaching, I was constantly lookin for new titles, just as you are. That was particularly true for my World Lit class, for which I read all kinds of authors I had never even heard of prior to searching.
I wish I had started recording the books I was reading sooner (and writing something, anything about the reading experience). There are so many books I am sure I read in my teens and 20s that I have no memory of now (including, I'm afraid, Catcher in the Rye). One memory I do have is finishing The Mayor of Casterbridge, aged maybe 17ish, sat on the bottom step of my parents' home in the semi-dark on a winter's evening, sobbing my heart out.
Oh yes, the books from my teams are mostly long forgotten. But that sounds like a lovely reading experience - amazing how those moments stick with is as much as the books themselves.
"Don’t discount the reading experience. Don’t discount the time and place and feeling that accompanies losing yourself in a good book." — this is such an important point! I find that I often forget the plot details of a book or characters' names, but somehow a certain vague memory of the feeling of reading the book, of the mood I was in when I read it remains for me and makes me feel like the book was really a part of my life.
Agreed - I find soany good books just by exploring. But that's the benefit of their being so much great literature - in any genre, there are great books to read.
Reading is a key element in lifelong learning.
I confess that most of what I read these days is in the genres that I write. But when I was still teaching, I was constantly lookin for new titles, just as you are. That was particularly true for my World Lit class, for which I read all kinds of authors I had never even heard of prior to searching.
I wish I had started recording the books I was reading sooner (and writing something, anything about the reading experience). There are so many books I am sure I read in my teens and 20s that I have no memory of now (including, I'm afraid, Catcher in the Rye). One memory I do have is finishing The Mayor of Casterbridge, aged maybe 17ish, sat on the bottom step of my parents' home in the semi-dark on a winter's evening, sobbing my heart out.
Oh yes, the books from my teams are mostly long forgotten. But that sounds like a lovely reading experience - amazing how those moments stick with is as much as the books themselves.
"Don’t discount the reading experience. Don’t discount the time and place and feeling that accompanies losing yourself in a good book." — this is such an important point! I find that I often forget the plot details of a book or characters' names, but somehow a certain vague memory of the feeling of reading the book, of the mood I was in when I read it remains for me and makes me feel like the book was really a part of my life.