American - Novelist | January 7, 1957 -
I've never been a fast reader. I'm fickle; I don't finish books I start; I put a book aside for five, ten years and then take it up again.
Nicholson Baker
StartBookFastNeverFinishUp
True, the name of the product wasn't so great. Kindle? It was cute and sinister at the same time - worse than Edsel, or Probe, or Microsoft's Bob. But one forgives a bad name. One even comes to be fond of a bad name, if the product itself is delightful.
GreatTimeCuteNameBadTrue
Maybe the Kindle was the Bowflex of bookishness: something expensive that, when you commit to it, forces you to do more of whatever it is you think you should be doing more of.
ThinkDoingYouMoreWhatever
While I was writing I assumed it would be published under a pseudonym, and that liberated me: what I wrote was exactly what I wanted to read.
MeWritingWouldReadPublished
One's head is finite. You pour more and more things into it - surnames, chronologies, affiliations - and it packs them away in its tunnels, and eventually you find that you have a book about something that you publish.
BookYouFindMoreHeadSomething
First, if you love the Kindle and it works for you, it isn't problematic, and you should ignore all my criticisms and read the way you want to read.
LoveIgnoreYouWantWayFirst
There's a time and place for the Kindle, and I own one now and have books on it that I don't otherwise have. But I don't find that my hand reaches out for it the way it does for a trade paperback, or (in the middle of the night) for the iPod Touch.
TimeNightFindPlaceHandWay
I like shelves full of books in a library, but if all books become electronic, the task of big research libraries remains the same - keep what's published in the form in which it appeared.
ResearchLibraryBecomeTaskBig
I've always thought of myself as shy.
MyselfThoughtShyAlways
The great thing about novels is that you can be as unshy as you want to be. I'm very polite in person. I don't want to talk about startling or upsetting things with people.
GreatPeopleYouPersonWantTalk
From my music training, I knew that, some Spanish rhythms apart, 5/4 is a time signature used only in the modern era. Holst's Mars from the Planets is 5/4. But if you speak lines of poetry in that pattern you just end up hitting the off-beats. It's only when you add a rest - a sixth beat - that it sounds as it surely should sound.
MusicTimeTrainingPoetryRestEnd
I'm often called obsessive, but I don't think I am any more than anyone else.
I AmThinkMoreThanOftenAnyone
Copyright © 2024 QuotesDict Nicholson Baker quotes