Ways of Reading

I often think about a post that Mandy Brown wrote way back in 2009 called Ways of Reading. In that post Mandy argues that we should “always read with a pen in hand” and “think of the text as the starting point for your own words” – which, of course, I adore:

Reading and writing are not discrete activities; they occur on a continuum, with reading at one end, writing at the other. The best readers spend their time somewhere in between.

So I’ve been writing messy scribbles in my books ever since. In fact I can judge a really good book by the number of highlights I leave behind in my wake. The more !!!’s and ???’s the better.