I’ve not delved too much into the white man classics either. I’m actually thankful for it. Even though I have dipped my toe into that pool a little over the years, there are only so many hours in your life and an obsession with the classics certainly limits the variety you can read.

Also agree on the must do more reading bit. Compared to how much I read when I was in school (and I don’t mean the text books), what has followed is decades of famine. I am trying to consciously read more recently. Part of it is just getting away from the internet, I think.

And on a side note

The advice given here, if you can call it that, is meant for people who want to be writers. As a regular reader, you will obviously read what you enjoy reading and nothing else. But a writer is like a designer, and you know how as designers we study and explore every style and technique out there, so that we can be the best designers possible. For a writer, reading is the same sort of research and study, beyond just the pleasure of reading, or at least it should be.

But, having said that, reading wider and expanding your points of view is never a bad thing.

I think creativity and the surreal stem from the same process. A process that, as far as we understand thus far, is uniquely human. We have an ability to pattern-match and draw conceptual connections and co-relations between disparate things which is both bizarre and magical.

That is creativity at its most basic. The more bizarre the co-relation, the more surreal the result. It’s really a measure of degree. I guess dreams and nightmares are more surreal because it’s like the playful connection-making mind is set free from the waking shackles of your conscious and responsible self. When the cat is away