Caitlin Moran “…what judging a literary prize did was remind me of what I knew when I was 11, and was wiser, and forgot as I got older and stupider: that reading is not a passive act. That it’s amusing that ‘bookworms’ are thought of as weak, bespectacled and pale – withdrawn from the world, easy to beat in a fight.
“For a reader is not a simple consumer – as you are listening to a record or watching a movie. A reader is something far more noble, dangerous and exhilarating – a co-artist.
“Your mind is the projection screen every writer steals; it is the firing of your neurones that makes every book come alive. You are the electricity that turns it on. A book cannot live until the touch of your hand on the first page brings it alive. A writer is essentially typing blank pages – shouting out spells in the dark – until the words are read by you, and the magic explodes into your head, and no-one else’s.”
Journalist, and judge of the Baileys Prize 2014, Caitlin Moran [‘The Times Magazine’, June 14, 2014]

Uh, yes. The reader is an active participant, not a sofa

To visit Caitlin Moran’s website, click here.
Check out the 2014 Bailey’s Prize [launched in 1996 as the Orange Prize for Women’s Fiction], by clicking here.

 

‘How to Build a Girl’ by Caitlin Moran [UK: Ebury Press]

If you agree with Caitlin Moran, perhaps you will agree with:-
Tracey Emin – today my studio is calling me. The paintings are all really happy and the paint wants to be used.
Amanda Hocking – write a lot, but read even more
Lisa Jewell – dislike of snootiness about genre fiction

And if you’d like to tweet a link to THIS post, here’s my suggested tweet:
I agree with @caitlinmoran that #reading is not a passive act http://wp.me/p5gEM4-13v via @SandraDanby