Neil Gaiman on Reading, Reading Terrible Books, and Libraries

So, at the last moment I decided to sign-up for NaNoWriMo, which will significantly cut in the time I spend writing for this blog. (In theory, at least – I hope I can force myself to churn out terrible writing for a month – sometimes I’m too much of a perfectionist!) Since this is the first day, I’ll point you to another absolutely lovely piece of writing (well, technically it was originally a lecture, but it’s still lovely). It is Neil Gaiman, explaining the value found in fiction.

I have trouble explaining to people why reading is so important, myself. Especially when I am lazy and I read terribly written stuff. Also, at times I feel bad when I sit down and read, as if I’m actually doing nothing, even though I know my brain is working.

It’s pretty widely accepted in our society that reading is important, but most of us wouldn’t know how to argue why if someone didn’t believe it. After all, can’t we get all the info we need in short little video clips on YouTube if we wanted? And we all hang out with many people who proudly declare, “I don’t read,” and we don’t know if we ought to have a good reply to that.

So, Neil Gaiman will go ahead and explain this better than I can. He’ll defend reading bad fiction too, fortunately for me. I certainly had my share of teachers who frowned on the books I read growing up. And, after defending both of those things, he’ll go on to defend libraries. Anyone who defends libraries (lovely, book-smelling places) is all right in my books.

Here it is! Neil Gaiman: Why our future depends on libraries, reading and daydreaming

I could add more complex thoughts on several of theses, and on Gaiman as an author in general (I have actually read a couple of his books), but I have a couple thousand words of a novel to churn out. So I’ll leave you lovely readers to discuss it amongst yourselves!