“I'm not a big crime reader, but I'm reading Michael Connelly's 'The Reversal.' I'm going back to his novels. I'm also reading Keith Richards' 'Life.' I'm always fascinated by the transition from the innocent late '60s and early '70s and the youth culture becoming an industry.” BigsCultureReadingNovelCrimeYouthIndustryReaderBecomingLateInnocentTransitionFascinatedKeithReversalYouth Culture Author:Jo Nesbo
“Books and newspapers assume a "common reader" that is, a person who knows the things known by other literate persons in the culture. Obviously, such assumptions are never identical from writer to writer, but they show a remarkable consistency” KnowsPersonsBookShowsCultureCommonKnownKnowledgeReaderAssumingNewspapersAssumptionRemarkableConsistencyIdentical Author:Edward Hirsch
“The novelist has more and more to say to readers who have less and less time to read: where to find the energy to engage a culture in crisis when the crisis consists in the impossibility of engaging with the culture?” CultureEnergyReaderCrisisNovelistsEngagingImpossibility Book:How to Be Alone: Essays Source: How to Be Alone: Essays
“You asked if I thought my fiction had changed anything in the culture and the answer is no. Sure, there's been some scandal, but people are scandalized all the time; it's a way of life for them. It doesn't mean a thing. If you ask if I want my fiction to change anything in the culture, the answer is still no. What I want is to possess my readers while they are reading my book if I can, to possess them in ways that other writers don't. Then let them return, just as they were, to a world where everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt, and control them.” PeopleIfsWorldWayWantMeanStillsI CanBookCultureReadingAsksAnswersFictionChangedReturnReaderScandal Book:Conversations with Philip Roth Source: Conversations with Philip Roth
“If it were possible adequately to present the whole of a culture, stressing every aspect exactly as appears in the culture itself, no single detail would appear bizarre or strange or arbitrary to the reader, but rather the details would all appear natural and reasonable as they do to the natives who have lived all their lives within the culture.” IfsWholeCultureNaturalStrangeReaderAspectStressDetailsReasonableBizarreArbitrary Author:Gregory Bateson
“In a culture defined by shades of gray, I think the absolute black and white choices in dark young adult novels are incredibly satisfying for readers.” ThinkingYoungChoicesCultureBlackDarkWhiteNovelReaderAdultsAbsolutesYoung AdultDefinedGrayShadeSatisfyingBlack And WhiteShades Of Gray Author:Maggie Stiefvater
“Calling something exotic emphasizes its distance from the reader. We don't refer to things as exotic if we think of them as ordinary. We call something exotic if it's so different that we see no way to emulate it or understand how it came to be. We call someone exotic if we aren't especially interested in viewing them as people - just as objects representing their culture.” PeopleIfsThinkingWayDifferentCultureObjectsReaderCallingOrdinaryDistanceRepresentingExoticEmulate Author:N.K. Jemisin
“We live in a cluttered culture, a culture of information in which even our computers can't tell us what's worth knowing and what is merely cultural scrap. In such a society, we don't have the experience of contemplative space, of the time or mood to engage a book of poetry or even read a novel. Who can achieve the unconscious-conscious state of the reader when everything is stimulation, everything is movement and information?” BookStatesCultureSpaceNovelKnowingAchieveInformationMovementReaderComputerConsciousMoodUnconsciousScrapContemplativeStimulation Author:T.C. Boyle
“I became a little alarmed at the number of my readers who took the meme more positively as a theory of human culture in its own right - either to criticize it (unfairly, given my original modest intention) or to carry it far beyond the limits of what I then thought justified. This was why I may have seemed to backtrack.” HumansMayLittlesCultureGivenNumbersAtheismTheoryReaderLimitsOriginalsIntentionPositive AtheismCriticizeModestJustifiedPositivelyMemes Book:A Devil's Chaplain Source: A Devil's Chaplain