Tag Archives: reading

Writing about reading

Posted on 12 April 2022 by Paul Vitols

Well, there was a hiatus. I won’t talk about why it occurred—for one thing, I’m not exactly sure why! In part there are too many things to talk about, and it’s hard to choose among them. I have been writing … Continue reading →

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at the top of my reading period

Posted on 10 March 2021 by Paul Vitols

Okay, so I care about reading. Well, that’s what I should be talking about, then, isn’t it. Every day I have a reading period. It starts usually around 3:15 p.m., although it might be earlier or later, depending on conditions. … Continue reading →

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the day I became an artist

Posted on 10 October 2020 by Paul Vitols

Saul Bellow said that a writer is a reader who is moved to emulation. From my own experience, this seems to be true. The book that has had the most influence on me, that has made the deepest impression, is … Continue reading →

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reading the author and not just his reputation

Posted on 1 August 2020 by Paul Vitols

I keep my reading list in a note on my iPhone. Whenever I come across a book I think I might want to read, I add it to the list. Most of the entries are nonfiction, and there are more … Continue reading →

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finding another career for Charles Dickens

Posted on 10 July 2020 by Paul Vitols

The word novelist is a generic one, comprising many and various species of writers before one gets down to the actual individual practitioners. For the kinds of book-length fiction fall along a wide spectrum. A natural way to categorize novelists … Continue reading →

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Under the Volcano by Malcolm Lowry: still good after all these years

Posted on 18 March 2020 by Paul Vitols

Under The Volcano by Malcolm Lowry My rating: 5 of 5 stars This one-of-a-kind landmark of 20th-century literature stands up to multiple readings. I have a somewhat more intimate relationship with Under the Volcano than most readers, due to the … Continue reading →

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circumnavigating a literary world

Posted on 12 March 2020 by Paul Vitols

I have talked a bit about my project to read the Bible as though decoding the genome of Western Christendom (that is, Western civilization). I am treating the books of the Bible as “chromosomes” of the genome, with the individual … Continue reading →

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mapping the Bible, gene by gene

Posted on 8 March 2020 by Paul Vitols

In my last post I was talking about reading the Bible as though decoding a genome—the genome of Western Christendom (to use Arnold J. Toynbee’s label for our Western civilization). I am currently making my way through Chromosome 6 of … Continue reading →

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chromosome 6—and other biblical topics

Posted on 5 March 2020 by Paul Vitols

And now my flu is all but gone. I am in the long tail in which my lungs are gradually clearing themselves, and I’m building my strength back up. In all, it was not severe; it was mostly done in … Continue reading →

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when reading is not just reading

Posted on 8 February 2020 by Paul Vitols

It’s 5:17 p.m., and I’m in the midst of my daily “reading” block. I put it in quotation marks because I also do things other than reading in the strict sense. My reading block is structured. The first part of … Continue reading →

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