Essay

After Liu Xiaobo won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, I followed the news about him—this dissident public intellectual who had given the Chinese government a major headache. Having read many books about nonviolent thought and action, I sensed that Liu Xiaobo’s life and writing could deepen my understanding further.

Reading is like exercise. You have to practice it. Call it the sit-down practice of exercising your mental and emotional acuities.

This essay originally appeared on bookscover2cover.com.

The longform book review on bookscover2cover.com is a combination of narrative, descriptive, and analytical style and is typically more than 1500 words in length. In this essay by founder Sandra Fluck, we examine what is longform writing, the longform style in the book review, and why the longform book review on bookscover2cover.com.

My passion for books began when I was young. I remember savoring books as we drove across the United States on our way from the East Coast to the West Coast. We were a military family and went where my father, a Chief Petty Officer in the Navy, was transferred. The Naval bases were always on the coast, except when we lived in Oahu for two years before Hawaii became a state.