Why read this blog? Why read at all?

My temptation is to have this site be all about me and my qualifications. I’m so great! I’m so brilliant! Hire me! Love me! Me me me! But, let’s face it— that would be dead boring.

I’d like my blog to be helpful, fun, quirky, and smart. So I’ll be posting writing related items, as well as tips, hints, nifty finds, and the like.

So why read this blog? Well, because I’m going to do my best to make it something I’d want to read. Some of the best writing advice I ever received wasn’t “write what you know” (although that’s pretty good advice). It was, “write what you want to read.”  That’ll keep you honest when nothing else will.

Heck, why read at all? Now we can just watch youtube, or read no more than 140 characters at a time (I’ve got nothing against Twitter; in fact you can follow me at @slkeeth). And I don’t think that reading blogs can compare to reading a book. Blogs are more like magazines. If you ask me, blogs are killing the magazine publishing industry. I personally have gone from 10+ magazine subscriptions down to about 3 in the past year. Of course, part of that is because I just quit my day job and seem to be lacking in disposable income at the moment. The other part is that I’m able to get very similar information delivered to my RSS reader daily.

As a side note, I use Google Reader, and it has totally changed my life. I used to have a few blogs in my Blogger menu, and on my iGoogle home page, but Google Reader is a huge step up. You can manage multiple blogs (far too many, in my case) easily and sort them quickly. I can even view them on my non-iPhone-mobile. It’s totally changed my life. Ok, maybe not my whole life, but it’s definitely changed the way I assimilate information. If you aren’t using Google Reader, you should. You can sign up at Google.com, even if you don’t have a gmail address. Try it; I think you’ll like it.

Back to the question. Why read at all? My answer would be that reading expands your world while it expands your brain. Moving images are all around us, all the time, but reading works your brain in a different way. I don’t think anyone would argue with that. I’ll probably expand upon my love of reading in another post. Or in a thousand other posts. It’s an obsession for me.

Can I tell you about the first time I went to a big library? I grew up in a very small town in Oklahoma, where the entire library was about the size of my current living room (and that’s not very big).  I read almost every book there. In junior high we moved to a larger town, with what you might think of as a normal-sized branch library. And the school library was a wonderland for me. But oh, the first time I went to the downtown Tulsa library… I can still remember the feeling I had as I stepped off the elevator into that forest of books. It felt like I’d been breathing through scuba gear my whole life, and I’d just stepped into the fresh air. I was overjoyed, and overwhelmed. I realized that I would never have time to read all of those books. I still feel that sad, overwhelming feeling every time I walk into my local Barnes & Noble or Borders. The tradeoff is the abundance, the sheer bliss as I contemplate that endless stream of the printed word. It’s so good that I’ll put up with the overwhelming feeling any day. Bring on the books.