Columns: Tag – Read
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Writing Quips and Tips
Romance – Why People Read It
People write romance for all kinds of reasons. But if you’re considering starting your first love story, it’s a good idea to know why people read them.
Writing Quips and Tips
Reading builds empathy
I fear for a society that doesn’t read.
Lately I keep coming across people who maintain, with a certain pride, that they never read. Okay there’s some self-interest here. I don’t like to see writing as anachronistic or arcane.
But we don’t want to become a society unable to concentrate on anything longer than a blog. We don’t want to be an ignorant society.
Readers learn without realising. Off the top of my head, just this year and entirely through fiction, I’ve learnt about consciousness, about Tudor society and the role of Thomas Cromwell, the gritty underside of Edinburgh, about mathematicians and the behaviour of chimpanzees, about sexual ambiguity and genetics.
What I fear most is that, when we no longer read, we lose the ability to enter different worlds, to place ourselves in other people’s shoes. Nothing makes us identify with other people quite like accompanying them on a life journey.
I fear that a society that doesn’t read is a society that lacks empathy. And that we can’t afford to be ...
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Writing Quips and Tips
Fiction isn’t falsehood, and history isn’t truth
“Fact” is trendy.
Non-fiction sells more than fiction. And when you talk to people about reading, they will often declare sternly that they prefer to “read facts”. They want to “learn” or “improve”, or whatever.
In fact, there’s not as much difference between the two as you might think.
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