Contest #2: "On The Importance of Reading"

Chris OConnor

Contest #2: "On The Importance of Reading"

Starts July 1, 2008 and ends August 31, 2008.

You have two entire months to compose this essay and submit it via this thread OR by email. Yes, just post your completed essay right here in this thread or email it to chris@booktalk.org or tara@booktalk.org. Include a title for your essay. "On The Importance of Reading" can be your title, but it doesn't have to be. It is merely provided as the essay topic and not as the required essay title.

• 250 - 750 words
• Your own personal writing
• Must have never been published previously
• Proofread and spell check before submitting

Be creative and tell the world what you get out of reading and why reading is so important. Write your own essay and don't even think about plagiarizing. If you write quality posts on BookTalk.org this should be easy and fun for you. Don't allow the word "essay" to throw you. An intelligent post on our forums, if free from slang, profanity, spelling errors, grammatical errors and smilies is no different than what is expected of you for this contest.

What can I win?

We'll be giving away a quantity of free books from our "Books Available for Giveaways" thread. How many winners we'll have depends on how many members contribute quality essays. In Contest #1 "Explore BookTalk.org, 100% of the participants won a free book. If my memory serves me right 5 people received the free book of their choice.

You'll also probably feel warm and fuzzy if you win and damnit that's priceless. Cool

I'm hoping people want to give this contest a shot because they genuinely feel reading is important and they want to share their passion with the world.

Who picks the winner or winners?

Ultimately, I reserve the right to select the winners, but I'll be asking the entire community for feedback. Your opinion will matter. If you are nervous about being judged by your peers then email your completed and proofread essay and I will post it here in this thread without your name attached. Or, if you prefer your essay critiqued privately just email and tell us to review it in private.

How do I participate?

Just start working on your essay. It would be very helpful if you made a brief post here in this thread stating your intention of participating. The more participants the better. And we have plenty of free books to go around. Smile

tarav · Posted: Wed Jul 02, 2008 6:42 pm Post subject:

For those of you considering entering this contest but would like someone to read over your writing before posting it in this thread, feel free to email it to me. I'd be happy to discuss your rough draft and/or provide feedback. Chris would be willing to do the same. Send your writing to:

tara AT booktalk DOT org
chris AT booktalk DOT org

Chris OConnor · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 9:20 am Post subject:

July 16th and not a single member has posted in this thread or emailed me about this contest.

Moon Knight · Posted: Wed Jul 16, 2008 11:14 pm Post subject:

Turnout has not been overwhelming eh? That is unfortunate as contests are always fun. On the bright side there is still 3/4 of the time remaining so perhaps there will be a surge of interest.

Having just discovered it myself I will give it a shot. Is that alright for me, being a new member, to submit a contest entry?

Chris OConnor · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 7:41 am Post subject:

Yes, please do! Smile

MichaelBalkind · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 9:54 am Post subject: On the Importance of Reading

The Need to Read

Piles. Yes, piles, everywhere I look. My whole house is filled with them. Why? No, not because we’re slobs, but because my entire family is in love with books. We read them, we collect them and yes, we pile them. Next to me, on both sides, as I write this piece, are bookshelves with over 500 hardcover books. Each night-table in the house is covered and filled with my kid’s, my wife’s and my latest reads. My wife visits the local library with one of our three kids at least three times a week. That’s of course in between trips to the local bookstore and or visits to amazon.com. Believe it or not, I even have to argue regularly with my 14 year old middle daughter to put down the book she is devouring and go outside for some other activity. It is common to walk into our house and think that no one from our family of five is home only to visit each room to find its inhabitant lying in bed, reading, even my son whose name happens to be Reid.

Of course, as a novelist, I am overjoyed with all this reading. As I write this piece I also must admit that I never realized the huge investment we have in these piles. But invest we must, for the true value of a good book can’t be counted in dollars, right?

Okay, so maybe I started this piece a little off track, but I think my message is clear, reading is ultra important to everyone in my household. Whether it is for enjoyment, learning or the desire to lose oneself in the creative world of an author, reading is vital.

Reading for me as an author is necessary. Although I used to read for enjoyment, I now read to learn. Not so much the facts that are filling the pages but the styles of other authors I admire. In order to become a better writer I need to study everyday. And what better way to study writing than to read the works of the countless masters of the trade. Alas, I really don’t enjoy books the way I did before becoming a published author. Reading to learn just isn’t as much fun as reading for the love of reading. But the importance of reading for me has increased tremendously.

So whatever the reason; be it enjoyment, self enrichment or pure escape, the word “importance” seems a little weak in describing my feelings for reading. I truly believe that for me and my entire family, reading is essential.

Michael Balkind
Author of Sudden Death. The first novel in the Deadly Sports Mysteries series.
Other books coming soon – The Foundation, Stealing Gold & The Fix
www.balkindbooks.com

tarav · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 5:29 pm Post subject:

Thank you for posting your entry, Michael! I enjoyed reading it! I hope to see more entries!

Chris OConnor · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 10:25 pm Post subject:

Michael, that was phenomenal. Thank you so much.

I do hope that you treat yourself to a little bit of pure pleasure reading once in a blue moon. For me, my most enjoyable reading is when I dive into a good fantasy book. I am mesmerized by castles, dungeons, swords and mystical creatures and lands. This is where and how I escape.

Do you have such an escape yourself?

Chris OConnor · Posted: Thu Jul 17, 2008 10:32 pm Post subject:

Moon Knight, I'm looking forward to hearing your thoughts on the importance of reading. Smile

MichaelBalkind · Posted: Fri Jul 18, 2008 10:28 am Post subject:

Chris & Tarav,
Thanks for the kind words. I hope your readers agree with you.

To answer your question, Chris - I do enjoy escaping into the creative worlds of many authors. I am a mystery/suspense buff. Much of my novel reading now comes from new novels that I trade with other new others. We sign and trade books, then try to help each others marketing by giving reviews on amazon.com or elsewhere. My problem lately is that between writing, editing and marketing my books and now writing freelance magazine articles all while still holding down a sales job, there just isnt enough time. Oh well.

BTW, Chris, a copy of Sudden Death is on its way to you.

Michael Balkind
www.balkindbooks.com

bibliophile_18 · Posted: Sun Jul 20, 2008 10:22 pm Post subject:

Visiting other worlds...all from the homes and sickbeds of the children.

How many times have there been kids in the hospital too sick to even go outside in the sunshine? The answer is too many. For some of these children, they are brought games and doctors that care. For the rest, they just lay staring out the window at the world they won't see until they get out. Why should they be deprived of an outdoors they create? No one thinks to bring them books!

If every child in a hospital bed had a book, they would fight on for life and a new experience. That law in America-'No Child Left Behind'- would be unnecessary. The children would be reading and working harder to make the grade. Many colleges would look at the grades of the children who have read against those that played games and did nothing but waste their creativity to decide who would get in.

All children should read, not just hospitalized ones. Doesn't any parent want their child to excel? I know I do, not just for a good college. A better life is lead just from reading a long book than from not touching the wonderful objects that transport people into the unseen-and often times neglected-worlds of the past and future. If the whole of the world's children were to read, these worlds would be cultivated and would, in turn, create more worlds to explore, more doctors to help, more of everything the world needs for everyone to survive the problems that arise from the darkness of corrupt, uncouth and often un-read leaders that show a distrust to the well-read, well guided people whose books and lives show the changes that could be wrought in our dying world.

tarav · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:41 pm Post subject:

bibliophile wrote:

hegel1066 · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:28 am Post subject: A Personal History of Reading:

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." - Desiderius Erasmus

For as long as I can remember, I used my library as a refuge from the world around me. Whenever I would get scolded by my parents, or when I would have a bad day at school, I would wonder off to my (then) scant collection of old, well-worn and dog-eared books and take comfort in them. They never said no, they would never refuse to let me open them and caress their cracked spines. They were the constants in a child’s world full of fleeting variables. Then, I drew an explicitly emotional comfort from books. Their tangibility was a great relief to me, the stories inside them, a fleeting pleasure.

I remember being asked what I wanted for Christmas many years, and replying with the name of a book, or a list of books. My parents’ expressions ranged from earnestness to a distant look of vague interest. Some of my first requests were the thrillers of R. L. Stine (the perennial favorite of children); my latest, the complete writings of Edward Gibbon and anything I could get my hands on my Immanuel Wallerstein. How quickly one’s tastes evolve! The years in between have produced a library of no less than five thousand volumes, ranging in subject matter from religion and religious history to philosophy to essays, reference books, technical books on mathematics and science I still have from my days in school, fiction, poetry, drama, history, sociology, biographies (and these are listed alphabetically according to subjects last name) of everyone from Niels Abel (the woefully forgotten Norwegian mathematician) to Zapata.

In these books, which, in a tribble-like fashion, have come to occupy a more than inordinate space of my apartment, I find worlds and ideas I would have never been exposed to before. I can hold my up dusty, moth-eaten copy of Edith Hamilton and feel confident in saying that I know Zeus, or at least have had my share of interesting inner dialogues with him. I know both the anguish and despair – and also the happiness – of Dorothea Brooke when her scholarly husband Mr. Casaubon dies. I feel the tremendous pathos and expansive despair in work of Milan Kundera, whose sparse novels belie an unsettling finitude. I smile ponderously over my austere ancient historians, looking so haughty in their leather covers – there is Tacitus, there Polybius, there Herodotus, there Cassiodorus. Their histories are full of such a moral force and drive the likes of which are rare in contemporary history. The idea that the history of Rome could possibly serve as much as a bestiary as a collection of Aesop has been called gauche, quaint.

Why I do I read? Why do I find it important? In years past, I would have said, “I read so the books will keep me company” and, later, “to learn more about the world.” Now? All I can say is this: I am human, and to be human is to make connections – connections with the past, and with all possible futures. This is my humble duty as a citizen of the world. I will never reach the end, and never hope to.

-John (hegel1066)

Chris OConnor · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:40 am Post subject:

Amazing job. What a pleasure to read.

ayemea · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 5:49 am Post subject:

Wow!
Could I write any more to make obvious how much I enjoyed reading this essay?


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