Elsewhere on the Blogosphere: Reading Outside Ourselves

I haven't been doing much writing lately, but I have been keeping up with others' blogs. Steph at Bella's Bookshelves (a blogger I sometimes think is reading my mind and writing my thoughts in another blog) recently wrote an amazing, excellent, well-written, thoughtful, wonderful, very good post about reading outside our comfort zones, saying yes to books we don't think we'll like, and all that jazz: Reading Outside Ourselves.

"This is what I mean: if we can get past our assumptions, our fears, even our preferences, often we find ourselves with something more to talk about. We go from reading whatever everyone else is reading to cutting our own path, to telling people what awesome new things we’ve discovered... Now we understand our fellow readers with different tastes, interests, viewpoints."

I've posted in the past about books as a form of social currency in trying to argue why reading is important; Steph has developed the idea even further (and with better wording) in arguing not for reading but for reading outside our comfort zones. In light of the lack of inspiring content here, take a stroll through Steph's full post, and be sure to follow her too - everything she writes is excellent.