Editing Roger Ebert (section)

===Other interests===
In addition to film, Ebert occasionally wrote about other topics for the ''Sun-Times'', such as music. In 1970, Ebert wrote the first published concert review of singer-songwriter [[John Prine]], who at the time was working as a mailman and performing at Chicago folk clubs.<ref>{{cite web |last1=Ebert |first1=Roger |title=John Prine: American Legend {{!}} Balder and Dash {{!}} Roger Ebert |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/john-prine-american-legend |website=www.rogerebert.com |date=November 14, 2010 |access-date=March 30, 2020 |language=en |archive-date=March 31, 2020 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200331072627/https://www.rogerebert.com/balder-and-dash/john-prine-american-legend |url-status=live }}</ref>

Ebert was a lifelong reader, and said he had "more or less every book I have owned since I was seven, starting with ''[[Adventures of Huckleberry Finn|Huckleberry Finn]]''." Among the authors he considered indispensable were [[William Shakespeare|Shakespeare]], [[Henry James]], [[Willa Cather]], [[Colette]] and [[Georges Simenon|Simenon]].<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=October 5, 2009 |title=Books do furnish a life |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/books-do-furnish-a-life |access-date=February 12, 2023 |archive-date=February 12, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230212233554/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/books-do-furnish-a-life |url-status=live }}</ref> He writes of his friend [[William Nack]]: "He approached literature like a gourmet. He relished it, savored it, inhaled it, and after memorizing it rolled it on his tongue and spoke it aloud. It was Nack who already knew in the early 1960s, when he was a very young man, that [[Vladimir Nabokov|Nabokov]] was perhaps the supreme stylist of modern novelists. He recited to me from ''[[Lolita]],'' and from ''[[Speak, Memory]]'' and [[Pnin (novel)|''Pnin'']]. I was spellbound." Every time Ebert saw Nack, he'd ask him to recite the last lines of ''[[The Great Gatsby]]''.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=October 17, 2010 |title=The storyteller and the stallion |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/the-storyteller-and-the-stallion |access-date=January 30, 2023 |archive-date=January 30, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230130044333/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/the-storyteller-and-the-stallion |url-status=live }}</ref> Reviewing ''[[Stone Reader]]'', he wrote: "get me in conversation with another reader, and I'll recite titles, too. Have you ever read ''[[The Quincunx]]''? ''[[The Raj Quartet]]''? ''[[A Fine Balance]]''? Ever heard of that most despairing of all travel books, ''The Saddest Pleasure'', by Moritz Thomsen? Does anybody hold up better than [[Joseph Conrad]] and Willa Cather? Know any [[Yeats]] by heart? Surely [[P. G. Wodehouse]] is as great at what he does as Shakespeare was at what he did."<ref>{{cite news| last=Ebert| first=Roger| title=Stone Reader| date=July 11, 2003| work=Chicago Sun Times| url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/stone-reader-2003| access-date=April 10, 2024| archive-date=June 2, 2023| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230602122346/https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/stone-reader-2003| url-status=live}}</ref> Among contemporary authors he admired [[Cormac McCarthy]], and credited ''[[Suttree]]'' with reviving his love of reading after his illness.<ref>{{Cite web |last=Ebert |first=Roger |date=October 24, 2008 |title=I think I'm musing my mind |url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-mind |access-date=February 25, 2023 |archive-date=February 25, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230225160338/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/i-think-im-musing-my-mind |url-status=live }}</ref> He also loved [[audiobooks]], particularly praising [[Sean Barrett (actor)|Sean Barrett]]'s reading of [[Perfume (novel)|''Perfume'']].<ref>{{cite web| last=Ebert| first=Roger| title=My new job. In his own words.| date=December 14, 2012| url=https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/my-new-job-in-his-own-words| access-date=April 10, 2024| archive-date=December 5, 2023| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231205093341/https://www.rogerebert.com/roger-ebert/my-new-job-in-his-own-words| url-status=live}}</ref> He was a fan of [[Hergé]]'s ''[[The Adventures of Tintin]]'', which he read in French.<ref>{{cite news| last=Ebert| first=Roger| title=Tintin! Tonnere de Brest! Mille sebords!| date=December 20, 2011| work=Chicago Sun-Times| url=https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-adventures-of-tintin-2011| access-date=April 8, 2024| archive-date=May 7, 2013| archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130507121446/http://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-adventures-of-tintin-2011| url-status=live}}</ref>

Ebert first visited [[London]] in 1966 with his professor [[Daniel Curley]], who "started me on a lifelong practice of wandering around London. From 1966 to 2006, I visited London never less than once a year and usually more than that. Walking the city became a part of my education, and in this way I learned a little about architecture, British watercolors, music, theater and above all people. I felt a freedom in London I've never felt elsewhere. I made lasting friends. The city lends itself to walking, can be intensely exciting at eye level, and is being eaten alive block by block by brutal corporate leg-lifting." Ebert and Curley coauthored ''The Perfect London Walk''.<ref>{{Cite news |last=Engelhart |first=Katie |date=July 12, 2013 |title=Roger Ebert's Pilgrimage |work=[[Slate (magazine)|Slate]] |url=https://slate.com/culture/2013/07/roger-eberts-lost-book-the-perfect-london-walk-reviewed.html |access-date=January 30, 2023 |archive-date=January 30, 2023 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20230130044333/https://slate.com/culture/2013/07/roger-eberts-lost-book-the-perfect-london-walk-reviewed.html |url-status=live }}</ref>

Ebert attended the [[Conference on World Affairs]] at the [[University of Colorado Boulder]] for many years. It was there that he coined the Boulder Pledge: "Under no circumstances will I ever purchase anything offered to me as the result of an unsolicited e-mail message. Nor will I forward chain letters, petitions, mass mailings, or virus warnings to large numbers of others. This is my contribution to the survival of the online community."<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml |title=Critical eye by Roger Ebert&nbsp;– Enough! A Modest Proposal to End the Junk Mail Plague |website=Panix.com |access-date=October 17, 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090916074641/http://www.panix.com/~tbetz/boulder.shtml |archive-date=September 16, 2009 |url-status=dead}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.lumbercartel.ca/glossary/boulderpledge.pl |publisher=The Lumber Cartel, local 42 |title=Roger Ebert gets 'two thumbs up' from the Lumber Cartel for this distinct, well-written pledge |access-date=November 14, 2006 |archive-date=July 6, 2011 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110706185005/http://www.lumbercartel.ca/glossary/boulderpledge.pl |url-status=live }}</ref><ref>{{cite web |first=Bill |last=Weiman |url=http://bw.org/ube/boulder.html |title=Bill Weinman · Why I Keep The Boulder Pledge |website=Bw.org |access-date=January 27, 2017 |archive-date=December 27, 2016 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20161227194551/http://bw.org/ube/boulder.html |url-status=live }}</ref> Starting in 1975, he hosted a program called Cinema Interruptus, where would analyze a film with an audience, and anyone could say "Stop!" to point out anything they found interesting. He wrote "[[Boulder, Colorado|Boulder]] is my hometown in an alternate universe. I have walked its streets by day and night, in rain, snow, and sunshine. I have made life-long friends there. I was in my twenties when I first came to the Conference on World Affairs and was greeted by [[Howard Higman]], its choleric founder, with 'Who invited you back?' Since then I have appeared on countless panels where I have learned and rehearsed debatemanship, the art of talking to anybody about anything." In 2009, Ebert invited [[Ramin Bahrani]] to join him in analyzing Bahrani's film [[Chop Shop (film)|''Chop Shop'']] a frame at a time. The next year, they invited Werner Herzog to join them in analyzing ''[[Aguirre, the Wrath of God]]''. After that, Ebert announced that he would not return to the conference: "It is fueled by speech, and I'm out of gas ... But I went there for my adult lifetime and had a hell of a good time."<ref>{{Cite book |last=Ebert |first=Roger |title=Life Itself |year=2011 |pages=189–191}}</ref>