My approach to books does not resemble Montaigne’s in most ways. I veer towards novels for the vast majority of my reading, although I’m not exactly seeking out entertainment in them. I seek out long, challenging stories with unusual forms. Yesterday I finished reading a novel by Hungarian writer Laszlo Krasznahorkai that was 407 pages of a single sentence.

It was actually easier to follow that most of Krasznahorkai’s works. I’m making my third attempt through “The Melancholy of Resistance” now and noticed that I had a bookmark on page 105. I started again from page one, not remembering any of what I’d read before, and by page 60 began to feel lost again. Krasznahorkai is the kind of writer who lulls you into a rhythm, following the same character for 40 pages, then shifts the focus so subtly that I regularly find myself six pages into a narrative for a completely different character before realizing the shift has been made.

The past month has led me through lots of long, challenging novels, with some especially dark subjects taken up by Roberto Bolano and William Vollman. I did read Virginia Wolff’s “To The Lighthouse” in between, but it was too short to serve as a true palate cleanser. Why I found my way back to the dark, complicated Hungarian, I do not know.

I do feel that reading deeply improves the quality of my writing, and I hope these essays in the past month have been somewhat more interesting as a result. I notice that I have not quoted much from these works in the essays, however. My relationship to quotations varies quite a bit.

I often quote Montaigne here just to give my readers context, not assuming they are terribly familiar with the source material. In early runs of the essays, I brought in outside quotes liberally as well, especially from Nietzsche. Later I quoted Proust quite a bit.

I’ve noticed that I put quotations into the speeches I write less often than many other speechwriters. To me, it’s a matter of form — when speakers quote they tend to put the subject first, which means the listener is valuing the authority of the person more than the ideas expressed in the quote, and this has always bothered me.

I’ve been tempted in my songwriting class to quote within songs, but my songwriting teacher likely would react badly to that. But why not make the song taken on a essay-like form, especially if you never intend to perform the songs publicly? Then again, why am I writing songs? I cannot answer that easily.

I had an idea when I signed up for the class that I could treat my song subjects much like my film reviews and could perhaps write them about movies that stuck with me. But the whole teacher-derived-writing-prompt system has thwarted my idea.

To be honest, I cannot stand writing prompts and every week I find at least one way to subvert the assignment. I tend to do this with Montaigne as well and rarely take on his subjects in the manner he chose.

Ultimately, no one really cares. We read whatever works for us, we write the subjects that keep our attention. If we’re lucky, someone reads what we have to say. If we’re even luckier, those words provoke reactions, maybe even opinions and more ideas.

The reading life and writing life, for me, are eternally intertwined.