read more , write less?

As I am now 'retired' I made a trip to library this week,  in rather a hurry as I had to get to work......... where this book caught my eye being a Booker shortlisted novel for 2013.

30 pages in and I am completely hooked.

I am going to learn from this book as well as enjoy the story.


Last nights morsel; a footnote on the keeping of diaries and blogs, in which the teenage Japanese author suggests that too many people sit in lonely corners writing and sending missives into the ether instead of interacting with each other;

"Once the writer in every individual comes to life (and that time is not far off), we are in for an age of universal deafness and misunderstanding".         

from Milan Kundera from "Book of Laughter and Forgetting" 1980 which I had not heard of.

It made me think that maybe I should write less and talk/read more. That way I could learn stuff.

I looked  up the "Book of Laughter and Forgetting", and it too gets great reviews and sounds fascinating.

So I have ordered that to read next.

And who knows where that will lead.

So I shall write less and read more, and then let you know.

the right to speak

Having seen Susan Hiller at the Tate yesterday I have been a little preoccupied with words and language today. One of the differences between my home and that of the local Leonard Cheshire Home is that there are a lot of signs around the building, for example labels on cupboards and safety signs. Most of us can see to read them. But what if you couldn't read out loud? One of the residents has aphasia ( the inability to communicate verbally ). He understands perfectly and has to communicate with nods and facial expressions. I was humbled by my inability to have a meaningful conversation with him. He carried in his pocket a small laminated book that enables him to spell out words; how many of us have the time and patience to sit and listen to someone speak by spelling out each letter of each word by pointing at the card? He is a young man, rendered speechless by disease.

I shall explore the use of the written word further, as it seems to be becoming important.