In the world of Instant Messaging and emails, I think the emphasis on good writing skills is getting lost. I see so many hastily written notes, I scratch my head , whatever happened to the art of writing? We have a family tradition of subscribing to readers digest magazine, my dad had the subscription for couple of years, I had it in my growing up days and now it is my eldest son (almost 12 yrs old ), who has to pick it up from checkout counters every time we visit a grocery store and a new issue is out. I am usually starved for time so don’t get a chance to read it that often, but a casual glance at the first few pages of July 2007 issue and I was hooked for quite some time. That is what a good literary writing is all about, it makes the reader feel so welcome, so liberating that he almost forgets everything else and continues with his readings. The July issue’s “Letter to the Editor”, caught my attention, it was Penned down by Peter Stockland, the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian edition. I was amazed by the vivacity in his writings, his clarity of thoughts and the connection he tried to make with his readers. Unfortunately it is the only 5 to 10% of writing’s that I come across which really gets me thinking, emotional, hooked..but then these are the guys who do this for a living

Here’s an excerpt from his writing ( I could not find a link to the article, I read this in print edition), and I have no intention of plagiarizing what really belongs to him (Peter Stockland @ Readers Digest)… “Scratch a diehard Digester and you’ll find someone who, more often than not, traces a connection with the magazine back to childhood, and whose memories of discovery of the magazine are particular and vivid. The bookshelves of grandmothers’ houses figure frequently in the recounting of those discoveries, as do cottage porches of aunts and uncles and living -room armchairs, where fathers indulged their reading passion. The blend of those memories with the magazine’s relevance to readers’ present lives confirms Reader’s Digest as place where Then and Now are points on a continuum, not fractures between the fashionable and the passe’.”

Well said Mr Stockland, I am a living example of your writings going straight to the hearts of your readers!!!

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In the world of Instant Messaging and emails, I think the emphasis on good writing skills is getting lost. I see so many hastily written notes, I scratch my head , whatever happened to the art of writing? We have a family tradition of subscribing to readers digest magazine, my dad had the subscription for couple of years, I had it in my growing up days and now it is my eldest son (almost 12 yrs old ), who has to pick it up from checkout counters every time we visit a grocery store and a new issue is out. I am usually starved for time so don’t get a chance to read it that often, but a casual glance at the first few pages of July 2007 issue and I was hooked for quite some time. That is what a good literary writing is all about, it makes the reader feel so welcome, so liberating that he almost forgets everything else and continues with his readings. The July issue’s “Letter to the Editor”, caught my attention, it was Penned down by Peter Stockland, the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian edition. I was amazed by the vivacity in his writings, his clarity of thoughts and the connection he tried to make with his readers. Unfortunately it is the only 5 to 10% of writing’s that I come across which really gets me thinking, emotional, hooked..but then these are the guys who do this for a living

Here’s an excerpt from his writing ( I could not find a link to the article, I read this in print edition), and I have no intention of plagiarizing what really belongs to him (Peter Stockland @ Readers Digest)… “Scratch a diehard Digester and you’ll find someone who, more often than not, traces a connection with the magazine back to childhood, and whose memories of discovery of the magazine are particular and vivid. The bookshelves of grandmothers’ houses figure frequently in the recounting of those discoveries, as do cottage porches of aunts and uncles and living -room armchairs, where fathers indulged their reading passion. The blend of those memories with the magazine’s relevance to readers’ present lives confirms Reader’s Digest as place where Then and Now are points on a continuum, not fractures between the fashionable and the passe’.”

Well said Mr Stockland, I am a living example of your writings going straight to the hearts of your readers!!!