I recently finished Alan Jacobs’ book on reading and found it to be an interesting commentary given the impact of technology on our culture today. One of the most interesting arguments that Jacobs makes is that we do reading a disservice when we talk of it only as something that we should do, comparable to eating your daily vegetables. We need to also embrace the reality that “reading on a whim” can be an ever increasing entertainment for the person that pursues it.
“Forget for a moment how books should be read: Why should they be read? The first reason—the first sequentially in the story that follows but also the first in order of importance—is that reading books can be intensely pleasurable. Reading is one of the great human delights.”
We often talk of people who read books for enjoyment as lesser than other, more elite, readers. I confess that I’ve even had thoughts of book elitism. At the end of the day, as Jacobs argues, we must learn to read primarily for the enjoyment of it and allow that enjoyment to take us further and further into the appreciation of reading.
He does a great job at showing how reading may seem like a discipline at times, but it is a discipline that will pay dividends and that is extremely lacking in our culture today.
“So whether you’re participating in an online conversation or reading a book by yourself, your experience is a readerly one and a responsive one. The most significant difference is that reading a book is dialogically asymmetrical: you learn about the book, about its characters and perhaps its author, but none of them learns anything about you. I’m not convinced that this is necessarily regrettable: many of us should probably spend more time just listening, rather than insisting on being heard.”
Finally, and this doesn’t really tie into anything in particular, I found a gem of a quote in it:
“A book is like a mirror: if an ass looks in, you can’t expect an apostle to look out.” G. C. Lichtenberg
Couldn’t agree more… I find the need to moderate my reading more than I do my TV watching. Diving into a good book becomes much more of an obsession than just about anything else – one of the reasons why the movies never live up to the books.
This is usually with fiction stories – anything by Dumas or Asimov is a shoe-in. What about you? Top fiction suggestions?
As an aside, the last quote is one of your best.
Haha, I knew I could count on you to like that quote!
The Chronicles of Narnia are my all time favorite fiction. The only fiction that I’ve read and wanted to reread (other than Narnia) is the The Giver by Lois Lowry. For some reason I love that story.
I’m not familiar with Dumas or Asimov. What would you recommend?
As a teacher, I fear that teaching children to read because they have to (end outcome=standardized testability) is taking the place of teaching them to truly love reading. I believe that if a person is raised to enjoy reading, they will naturally grow into a reader who enjoys more “elite” literature, due to the fact that they will want more challenging and stimulating material, hopefully. I was not raised in a literature rich home so I could take it or leave it, until I had kids. I learned to love reading through them and began exploring fiction and now read a lot of different types of literature.
I think people can learn to love reading even if it wasn’t ingrained from childhood. However, it usually takes a high interest topic or story to hook them. While Jacobs states, reading a book is dialogically asymmetrical, you learn about the book, about its characters and perhaps its author, but none of them learns anything about you, I believe with the right reading material, the reader can learn something about him/herself. What a treat it is to read a story, a book, or a blog and come away from it with a different perspective or an insight that could enhance your life or even change it.
I am now highly interested in reading this book. Thanks for posting your book reviews, they have enhanced my library.
That’s a great insight Carrie.
I also find myself going back and actually reading books that I was assigned in school but never really gave them a chance.
I love classic fiction… They represent the “myths” that resonate enough to edure the passing of time. Dumas’ “Count of Monte Cristo” or “3 Musketteers” are great…. Stevensons’ “Treasure Island”. Or “Robinson Curusoe” (sp?). All great classics.