Saturday, March 30, 2013

Ursula K. Le Guin on "accidental discovery"

My “research method” was to go to the largest library accessible to me, get into the stack where some books about whatever it was were, and blunder around in those shelves pulling off books until I found the ones I needed. I mean, how much can you know from the title? One book on Ancient Roman Sewers will be useless and the one next to it will be a revelation. But riffling through to establish such judgments seems immensely easier to do with an actual bound book than with the page-by-page limitation of a reading device.
From her blog (how much does it delight me that Ursula K. Le Guin has a blog? Almost as much as it does that Margaret Atwood has a Twitter.) (And, of course, Chaucer....) (Someone should really do a series of blogs by famous authors. Think of Juvenal's. Or worse, Martial's.)