"Words. A child needs a forest of words to wander through, a sea of words to splash in. A child needs to be read to, and a child needs to read."

TWO EXCERPTS FROM A POWERFUL PIECE, "The Gift of Reading", by Frank Bruni, IN THE NEW YORK TIMES:

Words. A child needs a forest of words to wander through, a sea of words to splash in. A child needs to be read to, and a child needs to read.

Reading fuels the fires of intelligence and imagination, and if they don’t blaze well before elementary school, a child’s education — a child’s life — may be an endless game of catch-up.

“Kids who read more get better at reading, and because they are better at reading, it’s easier and more pleasurable so they read still more,” he [Daniel Willingham, a professor of psychology at the University of Virginia and the author of Raising Kids Who Read] said. “And kids who read well don’t just do better in English class — it helps them in math, science and every other class, too.”

I’d go even further. Reading tugs them outside of themselves, connecting them to a wider world and filling it with wonder. It’s more than fundamental. It’s transformative.

Read the article in its entirety here: "The Gift of Reading".

• ALSO READ: "Read, kids, read"

Goodreads tells me I have read 107 books so far this year. Only 107?

My Year in Books! What I Read in 2013

www.goodreads.com

Ramesh Prabhu read 107 books in 2013. See the full list on Goodreads, the world's largest site for readers and book recommendations!

Like · · Share · Stop Notifications · See books

• Sheela Bhat, Ankita Maurya, Ashok Kamath and 4 others like this.
• 

  Pooja Garg Singh That's an average of a book every three days. Impressive

  Yesterday at 10:41am via mobile · Like
• 

  Teresa Asha Alexander I've read far far less but on the plus side, it's like the light in the reading part of my brain has been turned back on.
  
  Ps: I loved 'we need new names' and 'a tale for the time being'. 'The Luminaries' is my Christmas vacation read.

  Yesterday at 10:44am via mobile · Edited · Like
• 

  Tia Raina That's still more than twice of what I managed - a mere 47! Hats off to you!

  Yesterday at 11:03am · Like
• 

  Avinash Kumai Show off old man!

  Yesterday at 11:49am · Like
• 

  Sherry M Jacob-Phillips 107 books? And, you are cribbing, sir? I haven't even touched 50 books this year. So, plz don't rub it in.

  Yesterday at 12:53pm · Like
• 

  G Ganesh Pareek My Score is 39

  Yesterday at 2:57pm · Like
• 

  Rigved Sarkar You're slipping!

  Yesterday at 3:32pm · Like
• 

  Theo Rozario Voracious reader I reckon.

  Yesterday at 7:06pm · Like

Meet the Twitter exec who finds inspiration in the 200 books she reads every year

Claire Diaz-Ortiz is, according to Wikipedia, an American blogger, author, and speaker who leads social innovation at Twitter.

Diaz-Ortiz (pictured) also has more than 45,000 followers on LinkedIn and almost 3.3 lakh followers on Twitter, which does not surprise me now that I have read her inspirational post on LinkedIn: "What Inspires Me: The 200 Books I Read a Year".

Here's an excerpt:

Reading has been my favorite pastime since my earliest memory, and in my adult years books have become some of my greatest inspirations. I read more than 200 books a year, and most of these books are non-fiction. Business, inspiration, and leadership top the charts in terms of what I spend most of my time reading, and I the reason I put so much of my energy into reading these particular categories is because books in this genre, again and again, have changed the way I think.

Read Diaz-Ortiz's post in its entirety. And then check out my post: "Why you must read".

PS: I am now Claire Diaz-Ortiz's 3,29,602nd follower on Twitter.

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Your Inspiration Roadmap: More Than 60 Ways to Get Motivated"

Is there a book or two from your past that helped you see yourself and your world in a whole new way?

Every Sunday morning, I receive Dr Mardy Grothe's e-newsletter:
     

A WEEKLY CELEBRATION OF GREAT QUOTES IN HISTORY
           (AND THE HISTORY BEHIND THE QUOTES).

Dr Grothe has featured in this space many times before. A psychologist by training, he is an author and, as his website puts it, an engaging and entertaining speaker who gives scores of seminars every year to CEO groups that are part of an international network known as The Executive Committee (TEC).

I am reproducing the relevant portion of his latest piece here because, today, he is discussing a very important topic:

"Life-Altering Books"

BY DR MARDY GROTHE

The quotation in this week's Puzzler ["How many a man has dated a new era in his life from the reading of a book" — Henry David Thoreau, author of Walden] illustrates one of history's most fascinating themes: the idea that people can be changed — sometimes in dramatic ways — by the reading of a single book.

In the lives of countless people over the centuries, a life-altering book can be as influential as a lifetime of instruction from family members, clergy, and teachers.

It happened several times with Ralph Waldo Emerson [Thoreau's friend and mentor], whose life was impacted in significant ways by the confessions of Rousseau, the essays of Montaigne, and the confessions of St. Augustine. In 1840, he sent a copy of Augustine's book to a friend along with this revealing note:

    It happens to us once or twice in a lifetime
    to be drunk with some book which probably has
    some extraordinary relative power to intoxicate us...
    and having exhausted that cup of enchantment
    we go groping in libraries all our years afterwards
    in the hope of being in Paradise again.

Several decades later, Emerson returned to the subject of pivotal books in an essay in Society and Solitude (1870):

    There are books...which take rank in your life
    with parents and lovers and passionate experiences,
    so medicinal, so stringent, so revolutionary, so authoritative.

FRANZ KAFKA

The concept of life-altering books was clearly on the mind of Franz Kafka, when he asked in a 1904 letter to his friend, Oskar Pollack: "If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?" He then answered his own question this way:

If the book we are reading does not wake us, as with a fist hammering on our skull, why then do we read it?
A book should serve as an ice-axe to break the frozen sea within us.

I can think of several books that helped to break the frozen sea within me, including the one featured in this week's Puzzler. I tell the full story in my I Never Metaphor I Didn't Like book, but the brief version is that I read it [Walden]when I was a 20-year-old college student in the middle of a major "identity crisis". After reading the first couple of pages, I couldn't put the book down. And by the time I finished reading it, I had recorded several dozen passages on library index cards and tacked them up on the bulletin board above my desk. Some of those passages ultimately went on to become such an important part of my life that I can recite them from memory today, more than fifty years later.

How about you? Is there a book or two from your past that helped you see yourself and your world in a whole new way? As you think about which books belong in that category, take few moments to peruse this week's selection of quotes on the theme:

   "Books are the compasses and telescopes and sextants and charts
    which other men have prepared
    to help us navigate the dangerous seas of human life."
          Jesse Lee Bennett

   "It is chiefly through books
    that we enjoy the intercourse with superior minds."
          William Ellery Channing

   "A truly great book should be read in youth, again in maturity,
    and once more in old age, as a fine building should be seen
    by morning light, at noon and by moonlight."
          Robertson Davies

E.M. FORSTER

"The only books that influence us are those for which we are ready, and which have gone a little farther down our particular path than we have yet got ourselves."
          E. M. Forster

"Life-transforming ideas have always come to me through books."
          Bell Hooks

 "It is from books that wise people
 derive consolation in the troubles of life."
          Victor Hugo

   "If we are imprisoned in ourselves,
    books provide us with the means of escape.
    If we have run too far away from ourselves,
    books show us the way back."
          Holbrook Jackson

   "Books go out into the world,
    travel mysteriously from hand to hand,
    and somehow find their way to the people who need them
    at the times when they need them....
    Cosmic forces guide such passings-along."
          Erica Jong

"People don't realise how a man's whole life can be changed by one book."
          Malcolm X

   "The real purpose of books
    is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking."
          Christopher Morley

SALMAN RUSHDIE

"The lover of books is a miner, searching for gold all his life long. He finds his nuggets, his heart leaps in his breast; he cannot believe in his good fortune."
          Kathleen Norris, in These I Like Best (1941)

"Bread and books: food for the body and food for the soul — what could be more worthy of our respect, and even love?"
          Salman Rushdie

• ALSO READ:

Tell me, please: What role has reading played in your life? (Another thought-provoking post by Dr Mardy Grothe)

Reading this book will change your approach to life

25 books that will give you a better perspective on life and also help prepare you for the workplace

• EXTERNAL READING: From the New York Times: "What motivates one human being to chuck a book at another?"

When I want friendly and learned voices to give me advice...

...on which book to read and why I should read it, I turn to my two prized possessions:

and

• CLIFTON FADIMAN (May 15, 1904 – June 20, 1999), co-author of, and the motivating force behind, The New Lifetime Reading Plan, was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio, and television personality. Here is an excerpt from his obituary in the New York Times:

He lost most of his sight as a result of acute retinal necrosis in his late 80s. But according to his daughter, Anne, also a writer, he continued to vet manuscripts for the Book-of-the-Month Club, as he had since 1944, by listening to unabridged tapes of the volumes in question especially recorded for him by his son Kim. He dictated his assessments to a secretary. He continued to participate, by way of conference calls, in the club's editorial board meetings until March.

While blind he brought out a new edition of The Lifetime Reading Plan, a guide done with John S. Major that was intended to introduce Americans to the classics of civilization, and he was the general editor of World Poetry: An Anthology of Verse From Antiquity to Our Time.

Late in his life the book world honoured him for his love of the printed word by awarding him the 1993 National Book Foundation Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

• MICHAEL DIRDA, author of Classics for Pleasure, is a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for The Washington Post Book World. For more details, visit his home page on the Washington Post website. And here you can access the Goodreads synopsis of Classics for Pleasure.

• Coincidentally, a book written by Clifton Fadiman's daughter, Anne, At Large and At Small, is another cherished possession in my library. 

• ALSO READ: "Lusting after books? Let this librarian help".

• ADDITIONAL READING: "Why you must read".

The way you arrange your books says something about you, doesn't it?

Of all our newspapers, only Mint Lounge has the gumption, as far as I know, to devote a whole issue to reading. And only Aakar Patel, one of our finest journalists and my favourite Mint Lounge columnist, has the cerebral wherewithal to write a delightful column on the topic of how to shelve your books.

"Classifying one’s books," Patel writes, "is not done to arrange them in some cosy intellectual order. The point is to be able to find a volume when it is required, and to know what books you have on a particular subject."

He continues:

I feel about this because I have spent considerable time developing a system which achieves these two ends.

And then Patel, who owns 5,000 books, proceeds to elaborate on his classification system:

By colour
By series
By publisher
By alphabet
By series
By language
By theme
By subject
By genre
By interest
By geography
By quirk

Read the column in its entirety here: "Bibliophilia needs smart shelving".

MY BELOVED BOOKS AND BOOKSHELVES STARRED IN A MAGAZINE ARTICLE IN 2011.

Bibliophiles will especially love, and identify with, what Patel writes in the penultimate paragraph:

Few things are as pleasurable to me as opening a package of new books in the mail. Living amid them is very heaven. Perhaps expensive paintings are also like that, but I doubt it. All of your other possessions, your cars and watches and homes, are about how the world sees you. Your books influence how you see the world.

• Also read: What media students can learn from Aakar Patel, college dropout turned journalist.

• Additional reading: "Why you must read".

"Cloud Atlas" and the pleasures of re-reading

I can't remember the last time I enjoyed re-reading a book so much.

Actually I can't remember the last time I re-read a book. Because my greatest fear is that I am going to die before I can read all the books I want to read, I try to get through as many as I can at the same time — 12 at the last count. This is crazy, I know. But I can't help it — this is what bibliomaniacs do. Despite my best efforts, though, I still haven't managed to read even once all the books I own. So where is the time for re-reading?

I made an exception, however, for Cloud Atlas. I first chanced upon David Mitchell's dazzling novel in the Just Books library three years ago. I loved it so much I recommended it to my wife, Chandrika, who finished it in record time and pronounced it to be brilliant.

A couple of weeks ago we learnt that the movie based on the book would soon be released in India. And that became the motivation for us to pick up Cloud Atlas again. I began re-reading it immediately on my Kindle Fire (on which I have stored some thousand e-books). But my wife insisted we should have our own hard copy, so I purchased one for her last week on HomeShop18, paying Rs.267 for a book that would have cost me Rs.399 in a bookshop (it's now available on the website for Rs.235).

And two days ago, we went to watch the movie at Cinepolis. We knew the book's many-layered structure would be difficult to replicate on film and we were curious to see what Hollywood had come up with. Well, all credit to the three directors (yes, it took three experts in the movie business to realise Mitchell's wondrous vision on celluloid) — they have clearly made a superhuman effort, and an imaginative one at that. I have to say, though, if you haven't read the book, it is going to be difficult to enjoy and appreciate what you're seeing on the screen.

I also have to say the book is infinitely better than the movie. I am three-quarters of the way through the e-book now and how watching the movie has helped is that I can now visualise scenes and characters as I come upon them in my reading. For me, re-reading Cloud Atlas has become twice as pleasurable.

TOM HANKS AND HALLE BERRY PLAY MULTIPLE ROLES IN CLOUD ATLAS.

ADDITIONAL READING from The New York Times:

• "Souls Tangled Up in Time", by film critic A.O. Scott: "This is by no means the best movie of the year, but it may be the most movie you can get for the price of a single ticket."

• "Bending Time, Bending Minds", by Charles McGrath: "It might be possible to write a novel more unfilmable than David Mitchell’s Cloud Atlas, but you would have to work at it."

• And author David Mitchell himself on "putting words in Halle Berry's mouth".

Here's how to make time to read

I have lost count of the number of times I have urged my students to develop a reading habit only to be told, "We don't have time to read."

I have written earlier about the importance of reading for young people, especially if they aspire to be media professionals: "A love of books is fundamental. Reading should be like breathing. Then the writing will follow. And it will flow. Unhesitatingly. Copiously. Gracefully. ("If you don't read, you can't write.")

But I am stumped, I have to confess, when I am confronted by a "no time for reading" retort. So I was deliriously happy when I came across an article titled "5 Ways to Make More Time to Read" (posted on November 11 last year). Robert Bruce, a full-time web writer who also happens to be on a quest to read all of Time magazine's 100 Greatest Novels, first explains how, in the last few years...

...I’ve dramatically changed my lifestyle. I’ve trained for five half marathons and two full marathons while working a full-time job. I’ve read 30 novels since last September. And, on top of all that, my wife and I had our first child last June. Kids have a slight effect on your schedule. Maybe you’ve heard?

And then he outlines the tips that helped him make more time to read:

1. Sacrifice something.
2. Make a routine.
3. Set a goal.
4. Have fun.
5. Mix it up.

Each of the points listed by Robert Bruce comes with its own sensible explanation and workable plan. Read the post in its entirety here. And browse through the more than 300 comments, too.

Now do you think you will have time to read?

• Also read: "101 Books: Reading my way through Time magazine's 100 greatest novels since 1923 (plus Ulysses)"

• And you must read "WHY YOU MUST READ".

One of my all-time favourite books...

...reviewed by my all-time favourite blogger (who is a self-described interestingness hunter-gatherer and curious mind at large): "How to Read Like a Writer".

• A copy of Reading Like a Writer has been placed in the Commits library. As youngsters like to say, Enjoy.

• Also read: "Who can say no to a weekly interestingness digest?" 

• And you must read "If you don't read, you can't write".

A novel you will want to finish reading in one sitting

CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO READ MY FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATE AND THE COMMENTS.

I first came upon The Devotion of Suspect X at the Crossword bookstore in Garuda Mall. I was intrigued by the tagline on the cover. "The Japanese Stieg Larsson" read the blurb from The Times.

When I next visited the Just Books library, a couple of days later, a quick search at the computer kiosk told me it was available, and I picked it up and began reading it as soon as I got home.

The last time I found a thriller "unputdownable" was a few years ago when I raced through Johnny Gone Down, by Karan Bajaj. Now I had found a worthy successor.

I returned Suspect X to Just Books after I was done but I wanted more people to read it, so I ordered a copy from Flipkart. My wife is reading it now — she is thoroughly captivated — and afterwards I'm going to place it in the Commits library so that my students can enjoy reading it.

I guarantee even non-readers will love this one.

• UPDATE: My young friend in the US, Ankita Maurya, wrote to say she doesn't really like the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. "Is this still a good book, even with the comparison with Larsson?" she wanted to know.
  
  "Ironically, Ankita," I replied, "this book is nothing like Larsson's books; that is why I found that Times blurb a bit of a mystery. I think what the reviewer meant was this book also is a cult favourite and a bestseller, just like the The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and the sequels. Go ahead and pick up Suspect X — you'll love it." 

• UPDATE (August 8, 2012): From the latest issue of Open: "At last, there is someone to satisfy an Agatha Christie aficionado’s longing for old school whodunits — Japanese author Keigo Higashino".

• UPDATE (March 18, 2013): Today, at breakfast, I began reading Salvation of a Saint, Higashino's follow-up to The Devotion of Suspect X. Now I can't wait to get home from work and be done with my gym workout so that I can sit down again with Salvation of a Saint.

• UPDATE (January 18, 2015):  Salvation of a Saint, featuring two of the main characters in Suspect X, turned out to be a page-turner too. So when another of my young friends, the Toronto-based Nasatassia Michael, told me that one more Higashino mystery had just been published in English, I immediately pre-ordered the book, Malice, on Amazon. I am glad to report that I was wowed by Malice. Once again, almost from the beginning, we know who has been murdered and by whom. And once again we keep turning the pages breathlessly, this time to try to learn why. With every Higashino book I read, my admiration for his writing skills grows exponentially. How on earth does he do it?

Nine fine reasons to read

In her 2008 bestselling memoir I Feel Bad about My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, Nora Ephron (pictured left) offered a tantalising observation about one of the great joys of her life:

¶ Reading is one of the main things I do. ¶ Reading is everything. ¶ Reading makes me feel I've accomplished something, learned something, become a better person. ¶ Reading makes me smarter. ¶ Reading gives me something to talk about later on. ¶ Reading is the unbelievably healthy way my attention deficit disorder medicates itself. ¶ Reading is escape, and the opposite of escape; it's a way to make contact with reality after a day of making things up, and it's a way of making contact with someone else's imagination after a day that's all too real. ¶ Reading is grist. ¶ Reading is bliss.

MEG RYAN, BILLY CRYSTAL IN WHEN HARRY MET SALLY. EPHRON WROTE THE SCREENPLAY.

Nora Ephron is best known for a screenwriting career that has included Silkwood (1983), When Harry Met Sally (1989), Sleepless in Seattle (1993), and You've Got Mail (1998). Ephron, who turns 71 this week, worked as a journalist for nearly a decade before publishing a 1975 book of essays (Crazy Salad) and then writing a 1983 novel (Heartburn) that was inspired by her marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein (of Watergate fame).

• Thank you, Dr. Mardy Grothe, for the e-mail tip-off (excerpts above).

• Also read: "Why you must read".

UPDATE (June 27, 2012): Nora Ephron, R.I.P. — (From today's New York Times) Nora Ephron, an essayist and humorist in the Dorothy Parker mold (only smarter and funnier, some said) who became one of her era’s most successful screenwriters and filmmakers, making romantic comedy hits like “Sleepless in Seattle” and “When Harry Met Sally,” died last night in Manhattan. She was 71. (Obit: Writer and Filmmaker With a Genius for Humor.)