Pagi-Nation: This is my Daughter

Plucked from the bursting shelves of novels comes Roxana Robinson's This is My Daughter (Bloomsbury 1998). It has a 2 pound (as in sterling) sticker on the front from the Cambridge bargain bookstore Galloway and Porter, so must be one of the many cheap books Marie snaps up whenever we return to the UK.

Opened to page 192:

At home Amanda never had to read or to listen to reading. Her own mother never read books to Amanda and seldom to herself. When her mother did read, it was a new book, something with a bright cover, usually with a beautiful woman on it. Those were what Amanda felt were the right kind of books to read.

Having this week described my family in a blog comment as a "herd of bibliovores," the above behavior is nothing less than shocking. (You can bet that Amanda and her mother don't end up being published writers!) Yet we constantly hear that Americans don't read. Is that true in your experience? What are your children reading now? What are you reading to them?

Pagi-Nation

Pagi-Nation is my blog version of those old-fashioned parlour games. Every Sunday, I'm going to spin myself around in my study, grab a book off my shelves, open it at random and type the most interesting sentence I can find on that random page. If it's interesting enough, I might even comment.

If you're reading this blog, I'd love for you to do this too. It'll give me a good idea of what other people are reading, and what the randomness of the universe wants to bring to our attention.

Since this blog is ostensibly about writing, I'll choose my first book from the scads of writing books I own.

Here goes: A Life in the Arts (by Eric Maisel, Tarcher Putnam 1992)

Artists consider themselves to be independent people. But the artist's independent, rebellious, nonconforming nature, coupled with his introspective habits of mind, also make him wary of social interactions.... the artist, keenly aware that his journey is a personal and independent one, often fears that contact with his peers will slow him down, detour him, contain him, limit him, or unduly influence him.

Hmm... sounds like I need to stay in my ivory tower, rather than keep blogging with you people.

Are you a nonconformist, "wary of social interactions?" Or do you think contact with peers is actually the sort of detour that does an artist's body good?