fuckyeahreading!

Tolstoy and the Purple Chair

tikvah27:

Finished reading Tolstoy and the Purple Chair by Nina Sankovitch. This is a memoir of a woman who addressed her grief over the death of her sister by reading one entire book every day for one year.

I was moved to tears more than once by her description of her sister’s illness,death, and aftermath. I enjoyed hearing about how rewarding her reading (and writing about) these books was for her.

Ironically, I was not interested in reading her descriptions of the books themselves and her personal reactions to them. And no, I did not miss the irony of the fact that the aspect I this book that didn’t work for me was in fact what my tumblr is all about.

This tumblr has been great for me because it has reinvigorated my reading practice. Like a lot of people, I’ve gotten so distracted by email and skimming the Internet, etc that it became increasingly hard to concentrate in an immersed way with a book. But my commitment to recording on tumblr my reaction to every book I read has made me a more committed book reader. I’d already been reading on the commuter train for an hour every weekday, but I’m reading more now, and getting more and more back to the reader I used to be pre-Internet.