‘Reading Proust on My Cellphone’

No, not me! It was Sarah Boxer and she writes about the experience in The Atlantic:
“When I tell people this, they look at me like I have drowned a kitten…Reading Proust on my cellphone was, I have to say, like no other reading experience I’ve had before or since. It was magical and—dare I say it?—Proustian in a very peculiar way…
“Your cellphone screen is like a tiny glass-bottomed boat moving slowly over a vast and glowing ocean of words in the night. There is no shore. There is nothing beyond the words in front of you. It’s a voyage for one in the nighttime. Pure romance.”
.             ..Marcel Proust at about 20 (Corbis)
 
Read the whole delightful essay at TheAtlantic.com HERE
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While I’m not as…uh, grandiloquent?…as Proust, I do write same long novels and my writing is often described as “lush.” A reviewer at Library Thing puts my latest novel, ‘Empress’, in with books she labels “scrumptious.” I rather like that.
The reviewer adds, rather unexpectedly, that “I felt as if I were taken back in time to a place that was as political and as cut-throat, but hopefully we’re not as bloody, as today’s Washington D.C.”
My novel is set in alternative world that’s based on the Byzantine Empire. I’ll leave the implications of the comparison to today’s Washington to my readers to sort out.
(Buy your copy of ‘Empress’ on Amazon HERE)
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For people who have trouble finding the time, The Reading Room offers:

Tips on How to Fit as Much Reading Into Your Day as Possible

One suggestion is audio books, something my husband has embraced as a way of making exercise and housework bearable.
Another suggestion is reading with a companion:
Image courtesy of http://bit.ly/27wRVWi.
Read more suggestions at The Reading Room HERE
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The Portland Silent Reading Party in action:
Reading with companions, even other humans, can indeed be very rewarding.
At BookRiot, Jeff O’Neal tells us how to:

Host a Silent Reading Party in 7 Easy Steps

Read more at The BookRiot HERE
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Then, of course, there is the matter of reading in book clubs. In the New York Times, Jennifer Miller tells us that

Men Have Book Clubs, Too

and writes about The Man Book Club in Marin County, Calif. that is going into its ninth year.
“It has 16 members, a number of whom are lawyers and engineers in their mid-50s. Each month, the host must prepare a meal appropriate to the book under discussion. There was an eight-course French supper to accompany Henry Miller’s “Tropic of Cancer” and a meal of refined comfort food presented on TV trays for Bill Bryson’s 1950s-era memoir, “The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid.”
Read more about the group in the New York Times HERE
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Quote of the DayI usually express that sentiment a little more politely, but hell yes!
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