Reading Part 4

Is there any reason to read outside of the obvious benefits: better vocabulary, better focus, more empathy and compassion, avoiding dementia, and as education to be a writer? I don't think so. I don't think there is anything new I can state on the subject of reading.

I feel like the all benefits aside, there is the notion that once a person begins to read they will never be the same again. With reading, there is more knowledge. There is deeper thought. There are connections being made from one side of the brain to the other. And the distance between one connection and the next is infinite. It's a pleasant thought to think that there is infinity just inside the confines of the skull. Reading, is nothing short of the greatest human endeavor.

Reading Part 3

Reading is life. And a life of reading is a full and rich life. How about the life of a writer? Simply said, I do not know how anyone can be or can become a writer without first being a reader.

I know for me, when I started to write it was nothing more than cheaper versions of all things I had been reading. I was a big fan of John Steinbeck and although my earliest efforts as a writer were nothing like the words he wrote, I certainly tried. I was also read a great deal of Ray Bradbury although my writing never came close to his either. They were early influences though, and I am grateful for that.

As I continued to read, things that I read would influence me in varying degrees. A number of very notable reads influenced me very heavily. I read Wright Morris's Love Among the Cannibals pretty late in my evolution as a writer. Despite this book being nearly fifty years old at the time that I read it, it made a very big impact on me. If I'm honest, every novel I wrote was nothing more than an imitation of this particular novel. I mean, sure, there are a great many mid-century novels that influenced me: The Movie Goer, That Sheltering Sky and Dandelion Wine to name a few. But it was Love Among the Cannibals that really did it for me. I think it was the relationships in the story, mostly between the two main characters and then the element of the road that really turned me on. I do not claim to be of the same ilk as Wright Morris, but the impact of the book was profound. I have never read anything else by Wright Morris. I have seen much of his photography, and he was an impressive photographer as well.

Reading Part 2

It's both fortunate and unfortunate to be old enough to have lived during the analogue age. I refuse to be the rambling old sentimentalist who glorifies the old days and condemns the present time. That is not part of my personality for starters and the good ol' days were the same days we have now. The old days, the analogue days were just different. I doubt people have changed, and I doubt they ever will. Perhaps the way we interact and how we see the world has changed. Who knows?

What I do know is this: everyone you see is holding a phone. I mean everyone. Not just young people who did not live during the analogue days. I mean everyone. It's a rare sight anymore to see someone holding a book, and anymore, it's rare to see someone holding a conversation. There is no judgment here, there can't be. But think about this: not less than a generation ago, seeing someone in the park or on the bus with a book was a very common thing. I know, I know, you can read books on your phone, you can have conversations on your phone, but how many people are really doing that?

Reading

As I sit at my desk and look into the bookshelves opposite me, all I see are old friends. The spines of the books that line the shelves have stories, personal stories that do not always have the same story as the one written within. There are the places I was when I bought any given book. Or the places that I read the book, also a question. There are the people in my life, or formerly in my life, who suggested a given book. And there are, of course, many books I am yet to read. I consider the unread books friends too, although we are yet to be acquainted.

Some books are the reminders of lovers. Some are the reminders of times long ago when I was young, or I felt like the world was young. Some books are the reminders of times when I was lost, or not well. Some are the reminders of the good times. Books, those vessels of knowledge, humanity, peace and the divine that cannot be discarded, lost or otherwise seen as outdated or outmoded.