Tag Archives: Reading

How To Talk About Books You Haven’t Read

“Non-reading is not just the absence of reading. It is a genuine activity, one that consists of adopting a stance in relation to the immense tide of books that protects you from drowning. On that basis, it deserves to be defended and even taught.”

How To Talk About Books You Havent Read on Brain Pickings is a great piece that helped crystallize some ideas that had been swirling around in my brain. I spend a lot of time thinking about what I will read, what I will read next and whether I should continue reading what I am reading now. My reading time is limited, and I want to spend it in the best way possible for me. Since I’ve become so conscious of what I read, I have consistently read books that I have enjoyed more and that have made me think more.

There is that tinge of guilt that comes with not reading something, especially if it is a deliberate choice. I really ought to read ______ (fill in the blank with important literary work here). Well, this post banished all those guilty feelings. I can read, not read, skim, give up, just read the review in the NYT, as I choose, because it all becomes part of my collective library. Even the books that I don’t read have meaning to me.

The post even provides a system of categorization of unread books: unknown, skimmed, heard about, forgotten. Those books too may be weighted on a scale from an extremely positive opinion to extremely negative. I immediately put this rating scale into practice when going through my library and trying to decide what to read or reread next. A forgotten book associated with an extremely positive feeling got put on my “to read” shelf, while one with a negative or even neutral opinion was placed in the donate pile, as I knew I wouldn’t want to reread it.

I realize that not everyone delves so deeply into their reading life as to categorize books they haven’t even read yet, but it is a comfort to know that I am not the only one to do so. Indeed, there is a whole book dedicated to the subject. To be truthful, I probably won’t read that book, since this summary on Brain Pickings gave me all the food for thought I needed.

Some quotes about books from books…

“A mind needs books as a sword needs a whetstone, if it is to keep its edge.” – A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin

“Sleep is good,” he said. “And books are better.” – A Clash of Kings, George R.R. Martin

“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies …. The man who never reads lives only one.” – A Dance with Dragons, George R.R. Martin

“It’s all that reading that does it, Dietrich. It takes a man out of the world and pushes him inside his own head, and there is nothing there but spooks.” – Eifelheim, Michael Flynn

“My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.” – The Thirteenth Tale, Diane Setterfield

Fiction allows us to slide into these other heads, these other places, and look out through other eyes. And then in the tale we stop before we die, or we die vicariously and unharmed, and in the world beyond the tale we turn the page or close the book, and we resume our lives. – American Gods, Neil Gaiman

“What really knocks me out is a book that, when you’re all done reading it, you wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt like it. That doesn’t happen much, though.” – The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger

“Books were only one type of receptacle where we stored a lot of things we were afraid we might forget. There is nothing magical in them at all. The magic is only in what books say, how they stitched the patches of the universe together into one garment for us.” – Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury

“The best books… are those that tell you what you know already.” – 1984, George Orwell

What’s Reading For?

I agree with Jo Walton in response to the question What’s Reading For? at Tor.com: reading is for fun. Reading is for getting lost in a world not one’s own. As far as I know, there is no other way to get absolutely inside another person’s head, and that’s enlightening, educational, inspirational — but mostly fun. Don’t read what you feel like you ought to read; read what you want to read. 

Another thing that Walton says in this little essay that I find downright inspirational:

I do believe there are things everyone ought to do: big things like defending civilization, building the future, making art, and mending the world.

I want to do those things, too! Mostly because they also sound like fun.

I am a picky reader…

This is a repost of an old post of mine from Books Worth Reading. I think about it every time I hear someone say that they can’t or shouldn’t put down a book they’ve started reading, despite not enjoying it.

Let’s say, just for the sake of argument, that you or I read, on average, 50 books a year. This is based on reading approximately one book per week, with a two-week vacation (to make the math easier). I know many people read a lot more than this, but most people read less, and I think it is a reasonable number. At least, it is fairly true of me.

Now, also for the sake of argument, let’s estimate that we will all live to be 95 years old, and we will retain our eyesight and mental faculties until our last days. Omitting the first 5 years of life, when we did not know how to read, that gives us approximately 90 years of reading time in a lifetime.

So, averaging 50 books a year for 90 years means that most of us will read around 4,500 books over the course of our life.

In 2006 (the latest year for which I could find data), 291,920 books were published in the United States alone. It would take almost 65 of us, reading our entire lives, just to read all of those books. And that’s what was published in just one year.

I don’t know about you, but if I am going to be able to read only the tiniest fraction of all the books that are out there, I want them to be good books. Which means I’m not going to feel guilty again about putting a book down after page 100, or page 10, or paragraph 10, or even word 10.

Life’s too short to read bad books.

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How to be a better reader…

I spotted this question on Quora: How does one become a better reader and what does it mean to be a better reader? Here is my answer.

Being a better reader, I would say, means that you choose higher quality books that can enlighten as well as entertain you. By high quality, I don’t just mean the established canon of literature, but instead I am referring to well-written, impactful books in whatever genre speaks to your interests. Over time, you’ll find that you more naturally choose these books, that you learn more from your reading and that you retain what you’ve read longer. Your reading will start to inform other aspects of your life, particularly your creative life. In all respects, your reading will be richer.

A good way to become a better reader is to practice close reading. Instead of skimming or reading quickly, try reading word by word. Pay attention to the word choices writers have made and the way they have structured their sentences and paragraphs. Think about the effect they are trying to accomplish with their choices. You will read more slowly and you may read less, but you will get more out of what you read. And you will be unable to tolerate poor writing! For more on this technique, see Francine Prose’s book Reading Like a Writer or her article on Close Reading in The Atlantic.

I believe I became a better reader after I started journaling my reading. There are many methods available: a notebook, a blog, social sites like LibraryThing or GoodReads. Discussing what you’ve read with others is also helpful. Over time, I found myself choosing better books and thinking more deeply about what I read. It helps me to think of reading as a conversation between me (the reader) and the writer. Once the writer has his/her say, then I respond. This definitely helps me internalize what I’ve read and remember it longer.

How to have a conversation with a book…

Illustration of the final chase of Moby-Dick.

Image via Wikipedia

In school as an English major, I learned how to interpret symbolism in literature. Take Moby Dick, for instance. My professor made a point, which I still remember, of how Ahab’s hat symbolized his manhood, which the whale stole from him. He likened that to the scene in Thelma and Louise when the girls blow up the trucker’s shiny big rig full of oil (like a whale, ha ha) and then steal his hat before driving away.

Finding symbols, making connections, trying to guess what the author wants you to know — this is what English class is all about. In studying literature, we are meant to be doing something “important,” which is why we spend so much time discussing what the writer intended and what the text really means. We are taught there is a right way and a wrong way to read literature, that we either get it or we don’t. No wonder so many people get turned off of reading.

In creative writing classes, however, I learned what I already had guessed –writers mostly wing it. They write from the gut, or the subconscious, if you prefer. They don’t think in symbols any more than I, walking through a mall, would see a pair of red shoes in a store window and think, “Ah, there’s a symbol of my lost youth, if I ever did see one.”

Today I’ve come to think of reading a book as having a conversation with the writer. It’s a conversation where both parties are separated by time and space, and the writer will probably never hear my side of it, but it’s a conversation nonetheless. The writer brings a lot to our conversation, of course — characters, setting, plot, theme — but as the reader, I bring a great deal as well. My life experiences, my beliefs and values, my current preoccupations, even what happened to me that morning or what I read in the news last night — all affect how I respond to and interpret what I read.

The writer has put something on the page, some words. Some time later, I read them. And together we decide what those words mean for us, in that moment when they are read. If I read those same words twenty years later, they may mean something entirely different, and then the writer and I will have a different conversation, even though the words themselves haven’t changed.

All those English classes spent trying to figure out what the author meant by such-and-such an image were probably pretty useless. The point is not to become preoccupied with what the words are supposed to mean, or try to guess the right interpretation. Any writer who’s overly concerned that his readers understand his precise meaning at all times is probably not a lot of fun to read, anyway. I think what’s more important is the meaning that is created between the reader and the writer when the book is read. A novel is not a lecture. It’s a conversation. Or at least that’s what it should be.

The death of the book has been greatly exaggerated…

A multi-volume Latin dictionary (Egidio Forcel...
Image via Wikipedia

I see that yet another pundit is predicting the death of the physical book. His argument seems to be that books will go the same way as music and movies and become completely digitized. Well, I say that person does not understand that people interact with books in very different ways than they do with music and movies.

Book lovers enjoy doing two things with their books after they have finished reading them: displaying them and sharing them. Until e-books easily support these behaviors, the physical book will remain alive and kicking.

When I am finished reading a book, I may choose to do any of the following:

  • Put it on my bookshelf to be rediscovered by me or someone else years later.
  • Give it to a friend or family member to read.
  • Swap it in a book exchange.
  • Donate it to my library.
  • Sell it to a used bookstore.
  • Leave it somewhere for someone to pick up.

As far as I know, I can do none of these things with e-books.

Books have an aesthetic quality to them that goes beyond just the cover design. When I arrange my books on a shelf, I am making a statement about myself. I am showing what impacted me and what has value for me through the books I choose to display. It gives me pleasure to look at them and show them to others. Conversations are started. Sharing ensues.

And that’s the other thing about books: They contain information and ideas that want to get out there. That’s why their authors wrote them in the first place. Books are almost living things that need to move through the world. Confining them to an electronic device, and licensing them to only one reader, defeats their entire purpose.

People who claim that physical books are dead don’t love books in this way. They must not feel compelled to share them or display them. But there are plenty of people who do love books, and as long as they are buying them, I don’t think the book in its perfect, printed, 560-year-old form will vanish anytime soon.

Here is the original statement by Nicolas Negroponte: The physical book is dead in five years. Here is another rebuttal, sent to me by Brian O’Leary via Twitter. And here are some ideas for what to do with your books, if you do declare them dead (via The New York Times Sunday Magazine.)

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Note: Cross-post.