I realized that I got problems bigger than anything that can happen in prison. So I started reading books, talking to people who had a head on their shoulders, sold my TV and just got a whole bunch of books.
'Recreative' is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don't like the way that 'recreational' sounds - I don't like to say I do a lot of 'recreational' reading. I like to say that I read 'recreatively.' I do a lot of 'recreative' reading.
I definitely rediscovered reading for pleasure by devoting such a large swath of my time to sitting on airplanes. I am now painfully adept at removing my shoes so as to have the least amount of foot surface area touching an airport floor.
I have been very interested in the number of kids who have read the Sherlock Holmes books after reading the Mary Russell books. That's great. That's more or less how I rediscovered the Holmes books.
All reading should be pleasurable! I don't like people who keep reeling out the 'books are so important' line. First and foremost, reading is about entertainment, the same as movies, video games and music.
It's exciting to do something like this because usually what happens in theater is that, after the first or second reading of a play, it falls apart completely and the rehearsal process is such that you begin to pick up the pieces and put it back together again.
My grandparents - both of my mother's parents - were actors, and they ran the Reading Repertory Theatre Company, through the town of Reading, where I come from.
Reading is an activity subsequent to writing: more resigned, more civil, more intellectual.
The journey that 'In Praise of Slowness' has made since publication shows how far this message resonates. The book has been translated into more than 30 languages. It appears on reading lists from business schools to yoga retreats. Rabbis, priests and imams have quoted from it in their sermons.
I get thousands of letters, and they give me a feeling of how each book is perceived. Often I think I have written about a certain theme, but by reading the letters or reviews, I realise that everybody sees the book differently.
My poems tend to have rhetorical structures; what I mean by that is they tend to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There tends to be an opening, as if you were reading the opening chapter of a novel. They sound like I'm initiating something, or I'm making a move.
As a kid, I loved doing puzzles, solving riddles, and reading mystery books. I also loved animals and always had pets.
And I ride horses, swim, do a lot of reading, writing.
After you've lived with somebody for 11 years, what's a guy in a robe reading from a book going to change?
My way of finding a book is to go on Emma Roberts' reading list.
To spend this particular year reading essays to Dennis Robertson as one's supervisor, and, simultaneously, enjoying membership of the group round Keynes was indeed an intellectual treat.
Reading a piece of poetry with no beat in front of 20 people is way more challenging than rocking for 10,000 people.
My first memory of the Harry Potter series was my little brother just falling into those books and not resurfacing until he was done. That J.K. Rowling got an entire generation reading is extraordinary - I'm amazed, thrilled, and proud to now be portraying one of that phenomenal writer's characters.
We had a script reading, and that's where we met J.K. Rowling, which was really exciting.
Let the Latter-day Saints be in their homes, teaching their families, reading the scriptures, doing things that are wholesome and beautiful and communing with the Lord on the Sabbath day.
