A story been written during my sleepless nights, fairly accompanied by my SSRI drugs, a cup of frappucino and a chunk of optimism. Presenting you, my deadly trial on becoming the most random, engineering-major, truly amateur fictional writer, 'Dead Cat For Zoey'. Well, if Sophie Kinsella, Emily Cassel or Stephanie Meyer happen to read my book, please, don't flush mine into your bowl. That's too rude! Haha.
blacky dead cat

Saturday, July 10, 2010

Reading Shakespeare has dramatic effect on your brain

Would you agree that writing and reading, are both the same things? Really? How? Okay, like this. When you write, for sure, you have to read it to while jotting down the next words. That one is obvious. Okay. Move on. Do you write when you read? Not necessary right. That's it! When I said that line above, 'Do you write when you read?', you might pause yourself for nanoseconds, because you are thinking for any possibility of the question and this causes sudden peak in your brain activity! Genius~ Not me, it's you.


So, in a way, while reading, there are lots of thinking, visualizing, fantasizing and evaluating processes involved. When I read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, I took very unusual period of time to finish the book (I know, it's 454 pages) because it's not an easy thing to figure what was going on, as you are actually reading and solving a crime scene puzzle at the same time.

Now, let's take something 'harder' than Dan Brown's. I would say, I never understand this guy named Shakespeare. Yes, he's a weirdo and to read his literature is another pain in the eyes. Shakespeare uses a linguistic technique known as functional shift that involves, for example using a noun to serve as a verb. Researchers found that this technique allows the brain to understand what a word means before it understands the function of the word within a sentence. This process causes a sudden peak in brain activity and forces the brain to work backwards in order to fully understand what Shakespeare is trying to say.


Hmm. What about that? Intriguing right? But I'm not gonna read anything from him, haha, because of the language that impossibly understandable, for me, at least. It's ancient, people~

So, this is just a quick post, telling you why you should bother reading. Yes. Read.