Complete Readers Read Session 1

Readers Read Session 1, Complete

by Jacob Malewitz

Writer A Writer’s Eye, A Reader’s Eye, A Comic Eye, Chasing Heaven, Story And Script

The power is in your hands, young reader, old scholar. You can sit in front of the TV all day and play video games, wasting away, or you can play the thinking game.

The power is in your hands, young reader, for you can pick up a classic, get bored to tears, pick up a genre novel, say “This ain’t so bad,” and just start reading. Readers read. It’s a fun, joyous experience. They sit in coffee shops and book storees because they like reading so much, so very much, nothing is better in the world. So what are you waiting for?

Oh, I know exactly what your waiting for. The right time to read. You don’t want to think about all this and that, why he should pick her instead of the other one, why she started a small detective agency, why this young fella named Frodo has to go up all the mountains to another place. Yes, movies and TV shows have their place in the world. No, they are not wastes. They can tell readers different kind of stories with moving images. But the power is in your hands, as it always has been. Fun. Isn’t it? To pick up a brand new book in a small bookstore that is selling it for a steal. Fun, isn’t it, to pick up an old copy of a Hemingway in a garage sale and wonder why it costs a quarter. Who knows, maybe none of this will happen.

When you read Stephen King and Clive Barker, finding the horror each writer provides, what do you see? I see Stephen King as a man on the edge—read The Shining and find out. I see Clive Barker as a stealthy little writer who pens these little, but big, horrors with such a power its hard to put them down. Don’t you see it too?

Maybe not. Maybe you have little respect for horror and want to delve into some science fiction land made by the mad Philip K. Dick, the wondrous fantasy books of Ray Bradbury, or the modern classics by Dan Simmons.

I still see you shaking your head. Is this all just an exercise? Is he wasting all our time? Read the classic biographies next. They are a step above. Readers read biographies of authors because they show something about our condition. Readers read of Ernest Hemingway, Jack London, F. Scott Fitzgerald, maybe Hentry James, maybe John O’Hara, because they are big names. Yes, they are. And it’s fun to jump into the mind of a novelist. Always so much fun. It’s worth every penny.

Sure you can go to the movies and have a blast. I respect the power of a film too. I leave out much. If you want to go into the realm of what if, reading newspapers really won’t answer your desires. I suggest reading something with its own movable power. You need not love Stephen King to read horror—actually some of his books are bad. If you reading Clive Barker you may just end up ashamed for doing so. But you can do more. You can go for the literary works of someone like Virginia Woolf. The modern classics of Paul Auster.

I guess it’s all an opinion. I am drifting when I write. Something changes on the page as I see into this serious game. Every book has influenced me. Why not find a good book to set the mood?