On reading better

This weekend I was thinking and writing about reading. (and technology) I just came across this quote from Zadie Smith in relation to critical reading with which I concur. One of the exciting things about publishing a novel is the opportunity to talk about reading, which actually interests me a great deal more than talking about the business and act of writing.

“I think a good book review is a place to meet a book on its own
terms,” said Smith, “not as an ideological vehicle or an academic
plaything. Often people think of writing as primary and reading as the
lesser art; in my life it’s the other way around. When I write about
books I’m trying to honor reading as a creative act: as far as I’m
concerned the job is not simply to describe an end product but to
delineate a process, an intimate experience with a book which the
general reader understands just as well as the professional critic.”

 

source NY Observer