On the Experience of Entering a Bookstore in Your Forties (vs. Your Twenties)

Ari Meermans

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On the Experience of Entering a Bookstore in Your Forties (vs. Your Twenties) by Steve Edwards is interesting for a variety of reasons and it's much more than the title might suggest:

It's one take on why the advice to read widely is good advice and has a deeper meaning than those simple words might suggest, as well as being an essay on relative life experience in both reading choices and in writing.

As a young writer, I thought I had to read widely in order to learn different authors’ styles and sentence structures and voices. I thought I needed a sense of what sang and what sold, what had been done and done to death. But what I needed more than anything were the consequences of my choices. I needed to live the lives the books I read compelled me to lead . . .

Entering a bookstore now, at 44, with the benefit of hindsight, the choices I made as a young writer seem almost inevitable. My early love of Thoreau and nature writing and solitude led me to John Muir, Rachel Carson, Mary Austin, Loren Eiseley. Then I found Edward Abbey, Wendell Berry, Barry Lopez, Annie Dillard, Linda Hogan. I read Alice Walker’s In Search of our Mother’s Gardens. Leslie Marmon Silko’s Ceremony.

I wanted to know what they knew and make a practice of looking at the world—critically and creatively—through the lens of place.

That second quote is to me what the experience of "read widely, read deeply" is all about—another lens not to supplant life experience, but to enhance it. And "the meaning of books as you grow older".

It's quite a good essay if you have the time to read it; it isn't terribly long, but it does foster deep thinking about our reading choices as writers.
 
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I've started reading the article and it already has my interest. I'll have to finish it later; deadlines to meet at work. :)

Thanks for the link, Ari. :)
 

Snitchcat

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It was definitely an interesting article, Ari, but other than that, I have no comments on it as yet. I guess I'm still digesting the content. Or perhaps, I don't really connect with the author's viewpoint. We'll see how the percolation goes. :)
 

Ari Meermans

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Fair enough. Digestion is key with articles and essays of this nature. :)

Some things I pondered from his take on why and how we read:

Have my reading choices changed over the years, if so how? I've been reading voraciously for sixty-four years, but my tastes haven't changed so much as they've broadened and achieved some sort of balance between various genres of fiction—rather than one or two—and also into a greater scope of nonfiction instead of only nonfic on subjects that deeply interest me.

When we tell someone to "read, read, read" are we inadvertently leaving the wrong impression? Very often someone comes along and asks "How do I . . . ?" Is it possible we're leaving them to think we mean only that they're to read to see how others did that one thing successfully? We can't know what they're getting from those simple words one way or the other if they don't ask for clarification, so there's no way of telling what the takeaway was. (I often advise "read widely, read deeply", but is that even enough? Again, I don't know.)

There are other points in the article that had me creating new thought pathways, asking new questions, and pondering possibilities—and that's what I like about delving deeply into articles and essays. <G>
 
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DMcCunney

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Have my reading choices changed over the years, if so how? I've been reading voraciously for sixty-four years, but my tastes haven't changed so much as they've broadened and achieved some sort of balance between various genres of fiction—rather than one or two—and also into a greater scope of nonfiction instead of only nonfic on subjects that deeply interest me.
I've always read anything that didn't read me first (and some things that did), but as I grew older I read a larger variety of things. These days, most of what I'm reading is non-fiction. It's not because I plan to mine it for use in fiction - it's because I think visually, see patterns, and want to know about the pieces making up the patterns and how and why they fit and make the patterns I see.

I don't claim expertise in too many things, but I know at least something about most things, know what I don't know, and know how to find out more. (My SO once commissioned a button from a calligrapher friend saying "Oooh! Shiny facts, after watching me dive down online rat holes following links.) The process is much like the Three Princes of Serendip, traveling the world on a magic carpet, and constantly running into amazing things they hadn't actually been looking for. I have a magpie mind, remember what I read, and all of it fits in somewhere.

Besides. it's fun.
______
Dennis
 

Ellis Clover

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The central theme - encapsulated by the final takeaway - really resonates with me, because it's very much a reflection of my own anxieties as a person growing older and, in many ways, beyond the possibilities I'd once mapped out for myself. In one way I can't wait to age past this stage of expecting - expecting the kind of life I'd once thought inevitable, expecting things to happen that won't - while at the same time wondering what I am and who I am without that hope and without those dreams. But I can already taste the pure, uncomplicated relief of being on the other side of them...

As far as my own reading habits go, I was once a voracious re-reader and still have shelves of old favourites that I'll never give away, but these days I find the nostalgia of the re-read almost painful at times. I almost invariably hate reminders of 'younger me' - I absolutely despise the 'Memories' feature on Facebook and really must figure out how to disable it - so it's all tied in to that mild yet pervasive, generalised sense of disappointment/discontent/regret? I feel about my life and its almost total lack of distinction. New books are wonderful, though :) I've always read at least a book a week, across multiple genres, and that hasn't really changed.