An SF author who reads only SF will have little new to contribute, but someone with a broader experience will bring more to the table.
In the Seventies, my children played in the street, read politically incorrect stories, ate home-cooked food and occasional junk and, yes, were sometimes smacked.
Food, like sex, is one of the principal kinds of human activity that engage people when they wonder about how to account for different kinds of human behaviour.
I used to have a monthly cookery column, and am a big cook, so that whole sense of connecting what one does with food to one's cultural identity has always been fascinating to me.
Failure, it is thought, is what sells, and what people want to hear and read about. I am not so sure.
All that matters in life is forging deep ties of love and family and friends. Writing and reading come later.
I'd always loved to read - and come from a family of readers - but I never thought about writing as a career.
I have 60 years of reading to draw upon: naval memoirs, dispatches, the Naval Chronicles, family letters.
I don't really read 'business books,' and I didn't think 'The Paradox of Choice' was a business book. I'm very surprised and gratified that the business world thought it was one.
For business owners, there are many important documents to learn to read. One of the most important is the profit and loss statement, known as the P&L, and the balance sheet.
You read a book from beginning to end. You run a business the opposite way. You start with the end, and then you do everything you must to reach it.
One of my favorite things I read was John Steinbeck's journals while he was writing 'East of Eden,' which was so cool.
I like to read, especially nonfiction. I love learning, so I study languages, cook, learn basic HTML, and enjoy other activities that stimulate communication and the dark recesses of my musician's brain.
When the children were little, I'd fly into L.A. for a specific work project, but then I'd leave again, and when I was home, I wouldn't even read a script.
I read the Odyssey because it was the story of a man who returned home after being absent for more than twenty years and was recognized only by his dog.
Reading makes immigrants of us all. It takes us away from home, but more important, it finds homes for us everywhere.
I've read everything Thomas Wolfe ever wrote; my brother and I memorized whole chapters of 'You Can't Go Home Again' and 'Look Homeward, Angel.'
An important aspect of the current situation is the strong social reaction against suggestions that the home language of African American children be used in the first steps of learning to read and write.
As Lord Chesterfield said of the generals of his day, 'I only hope that when the enemy reads the list of their names, he trembles as I do.'
Fifty percent of people won't vote, and fifty percent don't read newspapers. I hope it's the same fifty percent.
I greatly enjoy reading the biographies of scientists, and when doing so I always hope to learn the secrets of their success. Alas, those secrets generally remain elusive.
