What Are You Reading?
I personally believe that the ‘reports of the death of reading have been greatly exaggerated’ (apologies to Mr. Mark Twain). You can READ about it everywhere and I’m sure you have your own opinions. It is true that I myself have not been reading lately as much as I sometimes do, but I find this is something that happens to me in cycles - I tend to do a lot of reading and then spend more time on other pursuits, in my (very little) free time. I’m talking here about reading for pleasure. I spend all day in the act of reading - emails, websites, blog posts, news - mostly online. However, I still prefer to do most of my reading, especially my reading for pleasure, offline (another post about that soon).
Of course, there are many more options of how to spend our ever-dwindling free time - Internet, video games, knitting, napping, socializing in real life, TV, etc., but I still do choose to read. Sadly, most of these options are mutually exclusive - unfortunately I cannot read and knit at the same time (though some people can)! So I must choose. I must make decisions. Often the decision I make is based on my mood, as these things are optional in my life and not mandatory. They are things I do when I don’t have to do anything else.
Maybe reading should be on my “mandatory” list, or on my list of things to do that are “good” for me (we can debate whether or not reading is “good” for one or not) like exercise and eating right. But somehow, the things on THAT list, the GOOD FOR YOU LIST, sometimes end up being things YOU HATE TO DO. Because you HAVE to do them - what a catch-22. Sometimes they start out being something you hate, like bike-riding, and become something you love and can’t live without once it becomes a habit.
Reading is more than a habit for me though. I want to enjoy reading. I always have enjoyed reading and would hate for it to become a “chore” in anyway. This situation can be discussed/argued when it comes to students and reading, but I’ll leave that alone for now. I come from a long line of readers and I know I am not alone in my fear that I will lose my eyesight and not be able to read. My mom has even gone so far as to say that she seriously considers learning Braille now, in anticipation of ever needing it, so she won’t have any delay in her ability to read should something happen to her eyes! Don’t want to “waste” time learning Braille when there’s reading to be done!
Whether I’m in heavy reading mode or not, I always have plenty of books around. I simply do not feel right without a nice big pile of books “to-read”. The pile is like a security blanket to me. People who are not readers do not understand these piles. I am a big non-fiction reader and so, right now, my pile includes fiction as well as Change or Die; Eat, Pray Love; and Totally Wired (this one I am actually reading and am almost finished with). 
The last fiction book I finished was actually a recommendation from Connie. She had told me about this book several times and while I wasn’t sure we had a similar taste in books, I decided to try it. Recommendations are one of the main ways I currently decide what to read, especially for fiction - with all this limited free-time, I can’t “waste” any of it! The book was Blessed Are The Cheesemakers and it really was great! I especially enjoyed the writing, and while it may seem weird, this line on the first page really had me:
She was made with fresh Coolarney milk hand-expressed at day-break every April 19 and she was treated like royalty from the first tweak of the first teat to the last crumb on the last tongue. She insisted on it. She was that sort of cheese.
So, what’s your current relationship with reading? Reading more? Less? Reading fiction or non-fiction? Newspapers - online or in print, or both? Magazines? What’s the last great thing you read that you would recommend? We want to know.
Filed under: Amy
I couldn’t agree with you more about the exaggerated acounts of the death of reading. An interesting article debunking the NEA report by Ursula K. Le Guin recently appeared in Harper’s Magazine. I couldn’t find a free online way to get to the full-text, but people are blogging about it (http://thearcanist.net/niceguys/?p=76).
Personally, I decided to moderate a book discussion at my local public library that forces me to read at least one full book a month. I don’t always get a say in the titles, which is good since it broadens my horizons. Tomorrow night we’ll be discussing “Mara and Dann: An Adventure” by Doris Lessing. Definitely not something I would have picked up on my own, but the group decided we wanted to read something by Lessing since she just won a Nobel Prize in Literature in 2007 and that was the choice. Next month it will be “The Last Days of Dogtown” by Anita Diamant (author of “The Red Tent”) and in April we’re switching gears and reading a memoir by Sydney Poitier. All very different selections!
However, I think I would recommend a couple of authors vs. specific titles. Every Chris Bohjalian book I’ve read is a unique and intriguing story. Ann Patchett’s novels are also very good stories that keep a reader engaged. I absolutely adore Barbara Kingsolver’s novels and wish she’d write another.
For the classic authors, I have read all of Jane Austen’s (and some twice), I love Edith Wharton and Willa Cather (can you tell I’m a woman?).
Of course, I also like some unusually sad books like “Half of a Yellow Sun” by Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy and both “The Kite Runner” and “A Thousand Splendid Suns” by Khaled Hosseini.
I guess I could go on and on…but I will admit that I go through phases where I do not read for ‘pleasure’ either. Sometimes, there is just too much online and profession reading and my eyes say “take a break!”.
I like this blog entry, Amy, if you can’t tell. : )
Lisa
[...] last week when I posted about reading not being dead, Pete Bromberg, over on Library Garden posted about that as well - [...]