Violetismycolor, I loved Life of Pi. I look forward to your list.

Reenie, you’re lucky, and I know your writing voice is original and unique, so it’s clear to me this isn’t a problem for you as a writer.

Kev, thanks for your thoughtful comment. I especially related to what you said about reading as writing. I tend to be a slow, careful reader, and perhaps that’s what happens, I just get so very involved in what I read. I’ve always been that way, never really wanted to read fast. I take pleasure in savoring every word.

I can understand why reading fiction might interrupt the process of writing one’s own fiction. Here are some rough, thoughts

Firstly, because a piece of fiction tends to have a distinctive voice, a creative voice,a voice with plays with language, which sings emotional harmonies with words, which you listen to, internally and with a view to building up an emotional fabric of and imbued with that voice. Non fiction can have that to, but it is designed to convince, to argue, not to transport and transcend the limitations of your own everyday experience.

Secondly, reading, fiction in particular, is also a form of writing. You are constructing a world, a view, a vision from the words that is perculiar to you as a reader, in a sense you are writing the book you are reading and it is an endevour that may, depending on your conciousness and the way you process information, to a certain extent replace or create interferance patterns with the act of writing your own fiction. This would particularly be the case if you are a careful reader, who takes the time to do the book you are reading justice, rather than skimming it. You are talking to yourself with another writers words, that is a powerful experience for a writer.

Thirdly, some people would argue that all writing is fiction,and reading non-fiction, is still reading a story of a sort. But of course it does not involve characters usually, unless it is biographical, and it is characters generally which define the impact and sucess of a piece of fiction. Charactesr always require you to position yourself at some level within their experiences, or identify with their experiences. Although TV and movies also use narrative techniques and character developments much the same as written fiction, they do not reach your awareness through the narrator, through the writers own voice, own written words, and own style. They used images, sounds which are not printed and final on the page, which are constantly changing before you.

Certainly I think it is beneficial to read and read and read when you write or as a writer. What I think is key if you want to read and write fiction at the same time, is to read a variety of different books, at the same time, to prevent that kind of immersion in a notehr writers style. But it may just be a thing that is personal to some people. I find it perfectly possible to read anything by any other writer in any gentre or form, once I have found the distinctive voice of the piece I am working on. Up to that point though, reading the fiction of a particularly powerful writer, or a book that I relate to very deeply can have quite a shaping effect on my piece. But perhaps this is not a bad thing, if you are working on something like a novel which will be revised and will change organically over the months and possibly years it takes to complete.

Kev

Bestsellers can be less interesting to individual readers than non-bestsellers because to sell that many they need to appeal to a common denominator. Insofar as they appeal more generally there is less in particular to interest particular readers. (I love some bestsellers like Stephen King though — I’m not criticising bestsellers!) Lesser sellers can be quirkier and thus if they match our own quirks, more interesting.