Book : The Reader's Voice

I happened to learn about the reader's voice from Cornelia Funke's trilogy : Inkheart. 

Mortimer Folchart or Mo, is a book binder.  He got this ability to bring characters from books to the real world. What I loved about Mo other than having a full-time job to treat books everyday is and his powerful reader's voice. The writer beautifully explained how some people have the ability to let written words alive. So I imagined how Mo's powerful story-telling would be in real life. 

Mo could paint the air with his voice alone.

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Some people do have the reader's voice. It captures your attention, it makes you listen. Some politicians have this ability, some public speakers need to learn this skill. I strongly believe that if your job is to speak to people, you need to know about this. Or else, many people, including me, would not listen to you while you speak. Not as an act of rudeness, we will just choose to avoid any possibilities of having to listen to you.

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Anyhow, in finding people with great reader's voice, I came across the famous celebrity writer : Neil Gaiman. I keep on having a strong feeling that being a celebrity writer makes you less a writer but he keeps on showing me that I am wrong. Not only did he wrote so many books, published novel graphics,  gave such an inspiring commencement speech last year, got a beautiful little library and a very a classic house with such beautiful dogs, and many more things that too good to be true as a writer, he also has a strong reader's voice.

From the speech he gave last year, I found out that he is one of the people with the ability to make people listen to him. You can listen to him reading one of his book : The Graveyard Book, or from his current project with Blackberry : A Calendar of Tales.

Being a writer and a reader both at the same time, that is more than enough. 

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Little Things 65 : Let's Read

I was in the woman's coach in the Komuter this morning. There were more than 70 women, *I counted. Some stared empty at the window, some religiously played their smartphones, some were asleep and some chatted.

No one held a book.
No one read.

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My sister went to the clinic yesterday and she complained that she had to wait for hours doing nothing. By nothing means socially active on the net using her smartphone or play games, I bet?

Why didn't you bring a book and read while you were waiting?

Silence.

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A conversation with my brother :

I think I want to be a writer.

If you want to be a writer, you need to read and write obsessively. Do you do that? That's the first step to become a writer. If you don't read, how can you learn to write. If you don't write, how can you improve?

Saying is one thing, doing is one step further.