A book starts out somewhere. This book – the one you’re holding right now – started out somewhere. Maybe it’s new, maybe it’s secondhand. Maybe it’s clean and fresh smelling; maybe it smells dusty and there’s a note written on the inside cover or a name and a date.When you read a book, you read it somewhere – in bed, on holiday, in the middle of summer, at the end of a relationship, at the start of a new job. Your story intersects with the story of the book and in the book and it makes you think. I have sent you this book because I hope it gets you thinking.
Once you’ve finished it, or along the way even, I hope you write down your thoughts. Fragments, poems, visions, memories, disconnected snapshots of the things the book made you think about. Or maybe detailed concepts fleshed out into essays worthy of The New Yorker. Anything that makes you wonder or think or feel or go “Hmmm” can be your starting point. Or your end point! Whatever takes your fancy. But I’m inviting you (perhaps challenging you?) to write down your thoughts and post them on this blog.
For some, this will be the hard bit. Finding the time! Putting my writing out in public! Oh my! Oh no… You can do it beautifully in one hour. And the cool thing is that it’ll make reading more enjoyable. Reading knowing that what you think about a book matters, because you decide it does and because your thoughts will be part of a conversation, makes you more attentive and active. It’s fun.
After you’ve finished reading and writing, the next thing in the process is to pick a friend and send the book and this invitation on to that friend. For some, this will be the hard bit – letting go of the lovely feeling of possessing a book and having it sit on your bookshelf. But (1) knowing that you’re not keeping it makes you read better, more attentively; (2) that book can do more if you send it on, and (3) if this is a way of sharing you become a part of then you’ll get books sent to you, too.
You ask your friend to read it, and then write about it, and then send it on, as well.
Eventually, hopefully, she writes her post and publishes it on Books Onwards.
So? Then there’s a community of people talking about books and what they make them think about, and that’s cool. So please, join in.
Read a book, write a few lines, send it on.