Neil Gaiman On The Importance of Libraries, Reading, and Daydreaming

From Departing the Text:


The following is a speech I found at theguardian.com posted October 15, 2013. It advocates the importance of reading, of fiction and of libraries as well as our obligation to support them.

If you're anything like me there just isn't enough time in your day to get to everything you want to.

So for you (and actually for me as well), I want to park an article I found here. I've already read it once, but this is the kind of thing that writers, teachers, and folks interested in creating, need to look at and read more than once. I warn you, it's long, but worth the time when you find it. This article was found at http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/oct/15/neil-gaiman-future-libraries-reading-daydreaming and posted online Tuesday, October 15, 2013.

So read (or re-read) it now, read it on the train or bus to or from work, read it while waiting for someone, or leave it parked here and revisit it later when there's more time. It's empowering.

Neil Gaiman: Libraries are cultural 'seed corn'

A feral child who was raised in libraries

Neil: I was probably three or four when I first started going to libraries. We moved up to Sussex when I was five, and I discovered the local library very, very quickly. But I wasn’t really hooked until I got to the point where I was old enough to persuade my parents to just take me to the library and leave me there, which would have probably been about seven or eight. And at that point it was like being given the keys to the kingdom.

More from The Guardian.

Neil Gaiman's library (2009)

we asked one of our all-time favorites, Neil Gaiman, if he’d be willing to give us a peek into his personal library, and he graciously agreed.

Gaiman first gained wide acclaim with his complex and literate 75-issue comic series The Sandman, and has since broadened his scope to write award-winning and bestselling novels (American Gods, Anansi Boys), screenplays (“Beowulf”) and yes, he still continues to write comics.

Naturally we’d assumed that someone whose work is filled with references ranging from literary to mythological would have a fairly extensive library but even so, we were a bit unprepared for the scope of what he sent us. In the basement of his house of secrets we find a room that’s wall-to-wall and floor-to-ceiling with books (along with a scattering of awards, gargoyles and felines).

More from Shelfari.

Neil Gaiman on Copyright Piracy and the Web

Neil Gaiman talks to the Open Rights Group about how the internet affects the books and publishing industry.

Neil Gaiman on libraries, literacy, imagination, the future-

It's important for people to tell you what side they are on and why, and whether they might be biased. A declaration of member's interests, of a sort. So, I am going to be talking to you about reading. I'm going to tell you that libraries are important. I'm going to suggest that reading fiction, that reading for pleasure, is one of the most important things one can do. I'm going to make an impassioned plea for people to understand what libraries and librarians are, and to preserve both of these things.

And I am biased, obviously and enormously: I'm an author, often an author of fiction. I write for children and for adults. For about thirty years I have been earning my living though my words, mostly by making things up and writing them down. It is obviously in my interest for people to read, for them to read fiction, for libraries and librarians to exist and help foster a love of reading and places in which reading can occur.

So I'm biased as a writer.

But I am much, much more biased as a reader. And I am even more biased as a British Citizen.

And I'm here giving this talk tonight, under the auspices of the Reading Agency: a charity whose mission is to give everyone an equal chance in life by helping people become confident and enthusiastic readers. Which supports literacy programs, and libraries and individuals and nakedly and wantonly encourages the act of reading. Because, they tell us, everything changes when we read.

And it's that change, and that act of reading that I'm here to talk about tonight. I want to talk about what reading does. What it's good for.

More HERE.

Why librarians are needed more than ever in the 21st century

In a 2010 interview with The Book Page, Neil Gaiman neatly set out the case for libraries and librarians in the 21st century; the remarks are even more relevant today, as libraries fight for a fair deal from publisher for ebooks, and with austerity-maddened local governments for their very survival.

More from BoingBoing.

Library advocate Neil Gaiman responses to silly verbal attacks

"The fine author Neil Gaiman recently found himself the target of a very silly politician — the kind that discredits his own position via childish behavior.. The person who did this name-calling is Minnesota House Majority Leader Matt Dean." So wrote Mark Evanier. But he provides a link to Gaiman's comments. And what does this have to do with libraries? All will become clear.

Neil Gaiman says closing libraries would be 'a terrible mistake'

Neil Gaiman said librarians were "more important than ever" in the internet age.

His comments came as he received one of the world's most high profile literary award for children's books, the CILIP Carnegie Medal, for his novel The Graveyard Book.

Gaiman, 49, is the first person ever to have been awarded both Britain's Carnegie Medal and the US Newbery Medal – considered the two most important children's literary awards – for the same book.

More HERE.