I am not a great fiction reader, so I found this video very encouraging in that direction. As I am a painfully slow reader and can only do so (with fiction anyway) in complete silence - or just normal outdoors sounds like birdsong and wind - without my mind getting distracted by TV, music or talking nearby, the idea of even knowing where to start is challenging enough. By the way, all those paperbacks you presented looked as if they have been carefully treated. I presume you never turn down the page corners !
What a joy it was to hear Nick reference the mighty Walt Whitman: no wonder Nick's subscribers count in the multitudes, and as numerous as the 'leaves of grass'.
Nick's first estimation of the value of fiction as being in its essence of the infinity of the imagination is also a refutation of the modern managerial utilitarian treadmill of the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Possibly the purest incantation of this estimation of the infinity of literary imagination is Eliot's (Four Quartets) 'Footfalls echo in the memory: Down the passage we did not take: Towards the door we never opened...'
However, Shakespeare wandered these 'untrod' passages a long time before... (Hamlet) 'O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself the king of infinite space...'
Shakespeare must have been alive to the metaphors of the Christian parables, whether of the feeding of the multitudes, the fishers of men; Jonah and the Whale...
Nick's 'Five Things Only Fiction Can Teach You' is a whole and nutritious banquet, especially as it is leavened in the absence of the spectre of Carol Vorderman (!)
I had to chuckle when you mentioned people listening to audiobooks at 3x speed. Our teenage son, now 16, has listened over and over again to the Harry Potter books narrated by Stephen Fry at 0.85x for four years now. I absolutely hate it when it's a normal speed now 😄
I wouldn’t be so harsh on Lee Child, Jack Reacher is fun and can be a gateway drug for non-readers. Child always has a sneaky (admittedly usually woke) theme in his books, whether it’s the shocking treatment of veterans by civil society, border issues and illegals, opioid addiction pushed by Big Pharma, dark web suicide encouragement, snuff movies to name just a few off the top of my head (I have read them all). Yes the sentences are brutally short but the books are aimed at the majority who never read, not Masters graduates or listeners to Nick Reads, and if they help develop the reading habit that’s a start.
Love the enthusiasm and I agree with everything. There’s nothing as good as a book. I read one a week, every week and have done for years. Not always fine literature of course but for me it’s about the escape, a book simultaneously takes you out of yourself and gets under your skin in a way a film can’t.
I am not a great fiction reader, so I found this video very encouraging in that direction. As I am a painfully slow reader and can only do so (with fiction anyway) in complete silence - or just normal outdoors sounds like birdsong and wind - without my mind getting distracted by TV, music or talking nearby, the idea of even knowing where to start is challenging enough. By the way, all those paperbacks you presented looked as if they have been carefully treated. I presume you never turn down the page corners !
Ha would never turn down corners. The only damaged ones are those that have been in my parents’ incredibly damp house.
What a joy it was to hear Nick reference the mighty Walt Whitman: no wonder Nick's subscribers count in the multitudes, and as numerous as the 'leaves of grass'.
Nick's first estimation of the value of fiction as being in its essence of the infinity of the imagination is also a refutation of the modern managerial utilitarian treadmill of the price of everything and the value of nothing.
Possibly the purest incantation of this estimation of the infinity of literary imagination is Eliot's (Four Quartets) 'Footfalls echo in the memory: Down the passage we did not take: Towards the door we never opened...'
However, Shakespeare wandered these 'untrod' passages a long time before... (Hamlet) 'O God! I could be bounded in a nut-shell, and count myself the king of infinite space...'
Shakespeare must have been alive to the metaphors of the Christian parables, whether of the feeding of the multitudes, the fishers of men; Jonah and the Whale...
Nick's 'Five Things Only Fiction Can Teach You' is a whole and nutritious banquet, especially as it is leavened in the absence of the spectre of Carol Vorderman (!)
Thanks!
I had to chuckle when you mentioned people listening to audiobooks at 3x speed. Our teenage son, now 16, has listened over and over again to the Harry Potter books narrated by Stephen Fry at 0.85x for four years now. I absolutely hate it when it's a normal speed now 😄
I can’t watch YouTube videos on anything less than 1.5 or 2. I now hate my own videos at normal speed.
I wouldn’t be so harsh on Lee Child, Jack Reacher is fun and can be a gateway drug for non-readers. Child always has a sneaky (admittedly usually woke) theme in his books, whether it’s the shocking treatment of veterans by civil society, border issues and illegals, opioid addiction pushed by Big Pharma, dark web suicide encouragement, snuff movies to name just a few off the top of my head (I have read them all). Yes the sentences are brutally short but the books are aimed at the majority who never read, not Masters graduates or listeners to Nick Reads, and if they help develop the reading habit that’s a start.
Love the enthusiasm and I agree with everything. There’s nothing as good as a book. I read one a week, every week and have done for years. Not always fine literature of course but for me it’s about the escape, a book simultaneously takes you out of yourself and gets under your skin in a way a film can’t.