Reading Lists Quotes

I think every parent knows that, like, boys and girls are different. And we just don't take that into account in schools on those things like required reading lists. 'Cause that was my experience, say, with my son, who had to read 'Little House on the Prairie' when he was in third grade. ~ Jon Scieszka

I myself discovered many authors through school reading lists and through school anthologies. The positives are: young readers can find the world opening up to them through books they study. The negatives may include bad experiences kids have - if they don't like the book or the teacher, or the way the book is taught. ~ Margaret Atwood

I would never require anyone to read any book. That seems antithetical to why we read - which is to choose a book for our personal reasons. I always shudder when I'm told my books are on required reading lists. ~ Amy Tan

I'm never going to complain about receiving free early copies of books, because clearly there's nothing to complain about, but it does introduce a rogue element into one's otherwise carefully plotted reading schedule ...
Being a reader is sort of like being president, except reading involves fewer state dinners, usually. You have this agenda you want to get through, but you get distracted by life events, e.g., books arriving in the mail/World War III, and you are temporarly deflected from your chosen path. ~ Nick Hornby

The initial small step is simple: Rather than making a sweeping determination to tackle the Great Books (all of them), decide to begin on one of the reading lists in Part II. As you read each book, you'll follow the pattern of the trivium. First you'll try to understand the book's basic structure and argument; next, you'll evaluate the book's assertions; finally, you'll form an opinion about the book's ideas. You'll have to exercise these three skills of reading - understanding, analysis, and evaluation - differently for each kind of book. ~ Susan Wise Bauer

An elegantly crafted novel, "The Reluctant First Lady" clearly documents author Venita Ellick as an exceptionally accomplished writer able to skillfully weave memorable characters into a riveting story line from beginning to end. As engaging as it is entertaining, "The Reluctant First Lady" is highly recommended for both personal reading lists and community library contemporary fiction collections. ~ Midwest Book Review August 2013

Many a book is like a key to unknown chambers within the castle of one's own self. ~ Franz Kafka

I suppose it could be said that indeed all my roads to Arthur have led to my novel, The Green Knight's Apprentice. I read Malory when I was very young and my first reading left me with very v
ivid images that haunt me still: white stags, headless damsels, horns hanging from tree limbs, and giants. Oh yes, I had the usual sword in the stone, lady of the lake, and Holy Grail images, too, I assure you. ~ Virginia Chandler

Finally, from so little sleeping and so much reading, his brain dried up and he went completely out of his mind. ~ Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra

The right books are like crowbars for our imaginations. When we find ourselves stuck at some place in life, the right book can pry open our inner idea banks. You know those moments: life has become so routine you could do it in your sleep-in fact, you wish you could. You need a change, but you're not sure if it calls for a career switch, a life overhaul, or just a new hairstyle.
During these seasons, the right book challenges you to think differently, to see life in a new light, to bring resolution to a problem, or make a life-changing decision.
Books can propel you out of life's occasional ruts. Through their mind-expanding, heart swelling, pulse-quickening words and ideas, books become like WD-40 for our brains ~ Pat Williams

The only thing better than a well-read book is a well-read book only read by yourself. ~ S.A. Tawks

Reading in the third millennium B.C. may therefore have been a matter of hearing the cuneiform, that is, hallucinating the speech from looking at its picture symbols, rather than visual reading of syllables in our sense. ~ Julian Jaynes

With reading, I was very lucky. I had a mother who read to me, not because she had time - she was a busy woman - but she found 10 minutes to come and sit on my bed with a book. ~ Michael Morpurgo

Reading the scriptures through the lenses of the Law you see God as unapproachable, through the lenses of Grace you see the outstretched arms of Jesus saying "come". ~ John Paul Warren

Thought, I love thought.
But not the juggling and twisting of already existent ideas
I despise that self-important game.
Thought is the welling up of unknown life into consciousness,
Thought is the testing of statements on the touchstone of consciousness,
Thought is gazing onto the face of life, and reading what can be read,
Thought is pondering over experience, and coming to conclusion.
Thought is not a trick, or an exercise, or a set of dodges,
Thought is a man in his wholeness, wholly attending. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Suffer the little children to come unto Me." Is there a prayerless father reading this? May God let the arrow go down into your soul! Make up your mind that, God helping you, you will get the children in. God's order is to the father first, but if he isn't true to his duty, then the mother should be true, and save the children from the wreck. Now is the time to do it while you have them under your roof. Exert your parental influence over them. ~ D.L. Moody

The unlucky hand dealt to clear and precise writers is that people assume they are superficial and so do not go to any trouble inreading them: and the lucky hand dealt to unclear ones is that the reader does go to some trouble and then attributes the pleasure he experiences in his own zeal to them. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Everyone should read at least 10 books in their lifetime - it helps your mind, develops your imagination, and can help you escape your reality. ~ Megan Wilson

When I got [my] library card, that was when my life began. ~ Rita Mae Brown

[About reading Rachel Carson's Silent Spring, age 14, in the back seat of his parents' sedan. I almost threw up. I got physically ill when I learned that ospreys and peregrine falcons weren't raising chicks because of what people were spraying on bugs at their farms and lawns. This was the first time I learned that humans could impact the environment with chemicals. [That a corporation would create a product that didn't operate as advertised] was shocking in a way we weren't inured to. ~ Carl Safina

The reason literacy is important is that literature is the operating instructions. The best manual we have. The most useful guide to the country we're visiting, life. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

I think about reading the poem to her, but some things are just too true to ever say out loud. ~ Tony Earley

There are so many errors and misstatements in that list that I won't even begin to name them. Obama was right about one thing, though - Islam has always been a part of America's story. ~ Barack Obama

I am what libraries and librarians have made me, with little assistance from a professor of Greek and poets. ~ Heraclitus

My father assigned me to keep his scrapbooks. At first I was interested in reading only his rave notices, but I got interested in reading what the critics were saying about whether the play was good or not. ~ Dorothy Fields

I often like to enjoy the beauty of a beautiful book. ~ Debasish Mridha

Reading historical fiction from a very young age, fired my imagination. I loved the history, the development of the characters and almost always, the romance filling the many pages. I try to write with feeling and compassion, of a world as I would like it to be, with adventure, suspense and, of course, romance. I'm a sucker for a love story, and what's a love story without a few tears. I think they are always good for the soul. As the author, I am in complete control of my work and with everything I write, I let the words flow from my heart. Very few days go by that I don't get an idea arising from a historical event and say: 'What If? ... ~ Sheldon Friedman

...if we're to experience change in our very nature, we need to enter the cocoon of the Word of God. When you sit in your lounge room or your favorite chair reading the Bible, think caterpillar. It's like you're spinning your own spiritual cocoon.

It's in the confines of the cocoon that the unseen work is done in the caterpillar...This is exactly what happens to us when we abide in the Word of God. It's here He can do His greatest work in us. As we commit to this process we too will experience internal transformation that in time will cause external change. ~ Christine Caine

So while we need to provide people with technical skills that will help them find employment, we can't afford to neglect the even more basic skills -- reading, writing, thinking, feeling -- that allow them to become fully realized human beings who care about the world they live in and the people who share it with them. ~ Paul J. Zak

I was reading a poem by my idol, Wallace Stevens, in which he said, 'The self is a cloister of remembered sounds.' My first response was, Yesss! How did he know that? It's like he's reading my mind. But my second response was, I need some new sounds to remember. I've been stuck in my little isolation chamber for so long I'm spinning through the same sounds I've been hearing in my head all my life. If I go on this way, I'll get old too fast, without remembering any more sounds than I already know now. The only one who remembers any of my sounds is me. How do you turn down the volume on your personal-drama earphones and learn how to listen to other people? How do you jump off one moving train, marked Yourself, and jump onto a train moving in the opposite direction, marked Everybody Else? I loved a Modern Lovers song called, 'Don't Let Our Youth Go to Waste,' and I didn't want to waste mine. ~ Rob Sheffield

The book thief has struck for the first time – the beginning of an illustrious career. ~ Markus Zusak

Playing the game is far more satisfying than reading the rules. ~ Bernard Haisch

If you ever meet someone who thinks they are so special, the best thing to do is smile. You don't have to say anything. Be friendly and then go do
your best. That will make you special, too! ~ Jeff Hutchins

What's writ is what's read, yet the meaning is gone, since context is what gives each quote its own home. ~ Will Advise

But when I read, I am completely alone. I have privacy from her and from everyone. ~ Sarah Crossan

I do hope we shall meet again. Perhaps we could have a reading club of some sorts. I 've read that one." She leaned in. "Have you reached the part where Mr. Darcy proposes?"
Asriel narrowed his gaze on Cross. "She did that on purpose."
Pippa shook her head. "Oh, I did not ruin it. Elizabeth refuses." She paused. "I suppose I did ruin that. Apologies. ~ Sarah MacLean

In re-reading 'Presumed Innocent,' the one thing that struck me - and I re-read the book four different times in writing 'Innocent,' interested in different things each time - but I did think there were a couple of extra loops in the plot that I probably didn't need. The other thing that sort of amazed me was how discursive the book was. ~ Scott Turow

For the moment, whenever I read, it is normally scripts. You start a book and then you think, 'I should be reading these five scripts.' ~ Douglas Booth

The pleasure we feel, reading a poem, is our assurance of its integrity. ~ Donald Hall

I have been in recent years the author of a bestiary and director of some atlas projects; I've written criticism, editorials, reports from a few front lines, letters, a great many political essays ... , more personal stuff, essays for artists' books, and more ... Nonfiction is the whole realm from investigative journalism to prose poems, from manifestos to love letters, from dictionaries to packing lists. ~ Rebecca Solnit

This is no book. Whoever touches this touches a man. ~ Ezra Pound