Reading

Bring in the New Year with Great First Lines

Lynette M Burrows

It’s the first Friday of the brand new year. Let’s bring in the New Year with great reads. For this First Lines Friday, I’m sharing recently released books. New books for a new year. Would you buy or read any of these? I’m standing at the water’s edge when the phone call comes, sand to my ankles, sinking deeper with each advance of the waves breaking on the beach. Branches by Adam Peter Johnson Fronson felt alive. The adrenaline had yet to subside. Anomaly One: Book One of the Singer of Days by Rick Krusky The figure of the man came from the impossible. The Quickening of Water: Book One of the Singer of Days by J. Andrew Evans Olivia drops down to one knee and waits in the shadows at the end of the street. Inside Outside by Sharlie M. Riverton Jessica13 dreamed of adventure outside the bunker. Origins: Bulletfoot Origins Book One by Marshal Rust They didn’t think Flynne’s brother had PTSD, but that sometimes the haptics glitched him. The Peripheral Book one of The Jackpot Trilogy by William Gibson She burst through the trees, cradling the creature in her arms. Jinxed by Amy McCulloch Sevastyan Amurov paced back and […]

Read Great Books, Watch Great Films

Lynette M Burrows

Read great books, watch great films. If the book has been made into a film, which do you do first? Do you read a book first or watch the movie? It’s an old question that pops up on the internet over and over. Does it matter? I believe it does, but my answer isn’t one or the other. Do both. Read first or watch first is purely an individual choice. My choice depends on the book or the movie. Read the Book We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else’s mind.. Anna Quindlen Reading a great book is an experience unlike any other. The author’s words fill your head with sounds and pictures and people. But it’s not just the author’s words that paint those things. Your experiences, your world, inform how you interpret the words. A book is usually a longer experience than a movie. You experience it in private, unless you are reading aloud to someone. Even then, it’s your life and your dreams coloring how you read the story. Which is why the movie disappoints you. I’m always frustrated when somebody makes a movie out of a […]

Are You a Thinking Reader?

Lynette M Burrows

I’ve been thinking about reading fiction a lot lately. Particularly about how we read fiction today. Not so much as how it relates to the fiction I write, though of course I think about that, too. We have more reading opportunities today than ever before. How has that fact affected your reading habits? Are you a thinking reader?  A Thinking Reader There is a book called, How to Read a Book: The Ultimate Guide by Mortimer Adler. Originally published in 1940, it identifies and explains ways people read. It also instructs how one should read the different genres from nonfiction to imaginative fiction. I’m not asking are you a thinking reader and expecting a reply any of the academic ways to describe reading. More accurately, I’m asking what do you think about when you are reading a story. Are you thinking or are you more viscerally or emotionally bound to the story?  How I Read When a story is engaging and well written with a compelling plot, I immerse myself in the story and read fast and straight through. I’m “feeling” the story without pausing to think. After I finish reading, I think about the story and the writing. If […]