I read for fun this week. Only Dull People Are Brilliant at Breakfast is a collection of Oscar Wilde quotes, one of Penguin’s Little Black Classics series.
It’s more like reading poetry than reading a novel because you can skip about, read out of order, pick and choose the lines that interest you. In this particular case there’s about 50 pages of quotes covering life, art, Englishness and intelligence, amongst other things.
When you read quotes in a block, you start to notice patterns, repetition, typical language. You start to notice why one phrase is amusing and one is not, and why some ideas resonate. I enjoy the chance to analyse and reflect; I don’t really stop and think about what I am reading in the same way when I am reading a novel.
I personally prefer the more comedic comments. They take the words away from lecturing and towards the feeling of a shared joke. That’s one thing I have noticed over and over: these quotes feel like a friend talking to me.
This isn’t the most standard read, and I fully appreciate that not everyone enjoys reading books of quotations, but from a writing point of view it’s great. There’s wonderful use of language, witticism that can be reviewed and analysed, and clever ideas worth exploring.
And it’s fun to read. Which is my primary focus when choosing a book for a Tuesday!
Happy reading
EJ
🙂
Becoming a writer 