READ WELL, WRITE WELL

‘We don’t have to
circle the world in order to find beauty and fulfilment. After all, most of
living has to happen in the mind. And, to quote one anonymous sage from my
trivet, “The world is only the size of each man’s head.”’

Writers will often tell you that the most important thing you can do to
build your skill is to read
other great writers. Reading is not only food for the soul but also fodder
for the brain. We often only
realize in hindsight what impact reading a book leaves on us—when we work
in new knowledge in
conversations, when we use a word that even impresses us, when we
articulate a thought so well it
takes us by surprise, when we meet new people because of a book they saw us
reading.

In Read Well, Write Well, Ruskin Bond brings us a
collection of stories, personal essays and poems that take us to wonderful
fictional worlds, that illuminate—through his own encounters with reading and
writing—the significance of association with the written word.