Who says reading is in decline?

I was struck in reading today's New York Times that the number of pieces on reading and books must have reached some sort of critical mass. Or perhaps it was only the Times's effort to assert its own relevance?

The online edition has begun a series called Draft. It concerns the art of writing and its maiden voyage was a riffy, elegiac essay by Jhumpa Lahiri on the pleasure she finds in sentences (the written not the served kind). This was flanked in the Sunday Review by two more essays. One by Dwight Garner where the message was on the medium - what sort of reading calls for e-readers, iPads, or the printed page, he asks? He cited the recent New York Review of Books essay by novelist Tim Parks (speaking of books in the news) which championed electronic reading media as

The pleasures of insufficiency...

Suggested by Janet: I’ve seen this quotation in several places lately. It’s from Sven Birkerts’ ‘The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age’:

“To read, when one does so of one’s own free will, is to make a volitional statement, to cast a vote; it is to posit an elsewhere and set off toward it. And like any traveling, reading is at once a movement and a comment of sorts about the place one has left. To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficiency either of one’s life or one’s orientation toward it.”

To what extent does this describe you?

To travel to another place (or time) is certainly one kind of volitional reading experience. When I conducted an informal research project (1, 2) on susceptibility to the reading experience, the sense of being transported away from the place we're in or to another place, was a commonly reported occurrence in the 92 respondents who participated, so one might even say that it is more than merely metaphoric. I do sometimes specifically read to go elsewhere, i.e. to escape, however I can also read to go more deeply towards myself. I would consider that a travel of sorts, but not a move away. I also read volitionally for information, and when I do I feel rather that I am holding my place in the present by seeking a specific piece of information referent to it. I may go briefly to another place, but with one eye fixed firmly on my current location. I'm reading to come back when the information is gained. It's like beginning to go through the wardrobe to Narnia, but constantly looking back and seeing the coats.

As for the second part of the question, I would answer yes. To seek the world of a book is to at some level admit the insufficiency of your current place and time, but not necessarily admit its wholesale failure. I read for new experience and new information and insomuch as I do that, I must be considering my current fund of information or my current experience less than perfectly pleasing. I know we supposedly seek pleasure and avoid danger on a very basic level, but I think of complacency as a dirty word. I want new experiences - set in fiction or as memoir, biography or travelogue - I crave to know more about the states and actions of other people, other places, and other times. I want new recipes, new scuttlebutt about Stalin, a new way of thinking about the impact of World War I, new information about how the brain works, new insight into a favorite artist's process (and a picture of their work space) and a new story about some attorney who contracts a disease that forces him to walk endlessly forward. I want the frame they provide to open up the way I experience my own life or to reinvigorate what I think I already know. I want after reading to see greener greens. I want my wine to taste better. I want to enrich the context that is my life, and to the extent that I crave that, I admit its current insufficiency. That's not to say that I'm eternally miserable, only that I know that I don't know everything and that its worth finding out more. And inherent to that ritual of going out from this place to new places via books (and other means like experience of other arts, or actual travel) is the search for new books, their acquisition, and the pleasant anticipation of reading them from this place of comfort. I enjoy that pleasure every day, which is to say that being in this place of insufficiency is not endless pain, even if I live in longing. If I'm honest about it, it will never be sufficient and that insufficiency is, in itself, a kind of pleasure.

Peddling our vice to minors...

Suggested by Barbara H: How can you encourage a non-reading child to read? What about a teen-ager? Would you require books to be read in the hopes that they would enjoy them once they got into them, or offer incentives, or just suggest interesting books? If you do offer incentives and suggestions and that doesn’t work, would you then require a certain amount of reading? At what point do you just accept that your child is a non-reader? In the book Gifted Hands by brilliant surgeon Ben Carson, one of the things that turned his life around was his mother’s requirement that he and his brother read books and write book reports for her. That approach worked with him, but I have been afraid to try it. My children don’t need to “turn their lives around,” but they would gain so much from reading and I think they would enjoy it so much if they would just stop telling themselves, “I just don’t like to read.”

Maybe they're not telling themselves anything, maybe they really don't like to read. There are many different kinds of brains. Reading may be associated with great pleasures for some of us - maybe because we were really good at it, maybe because it helped us to escape doing other things, maybe because it allowed us to be alone - it gave us pleasure, but not everyone is like us. As the book Proust and the Squid discusses, our brains did not evolve with reading "in mind." Collecting information while solitary from a bunch of arbitrary symbols that have nothing to do with the sounds they represent, then linking them into groups which have little to do with the concepts they represent, and then tying that to information others tell us we are meant to have or stranger still to imaginary people and places that come alive in our heads might be completely nonsensical to some people. It comes very naturally to us bookey types, but for others it is unnatural or even difficult. Perhaps they are more skilled with gathering information from what they hear. Maybe they are better at processing non-verbal information that represents concepts through two and three dimensional constructions. Not every one of those people has a learning disorder, although if that difference is very extreme then that could be the case, but there is a natural range of cognitive strengths and weaknesses and reading may not be your childrens' strength.

Forty years ago we had many fewer choices for either amusement or for information. There weren't 200 television channels and there was no internet. If you needed information for school or for your own interest, you went to an encyclopedia, The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature, or to the card catalogue. You will notice, you even had to read to know what to read! Now we have so many choices and there is so much information. Reading may seem to a child to be completely overwhelming or completely unnecessary. Turn off your television, and limit their TV and hours on the computer.

So how to get a kid to read - I wish I knew since I love it too. With a younger one - read to them, read around them. With any age, notice what their interests are and give them books about that. Notice your child - do they like solitary activities or those in groups? They may not like to read because they have to do it alone. Perhaps there are some organized peer activities that involve books, the characters from books, or writing. Do they like pictures? Although some think it sacrilege, many kids begin to love reading through comic books. Are they impatient? Can they not sit still? Maybe they can act out the story of a book either as they read it or after they have read it. Any time they do talk about a story, television program, or film - do they go for plot, language, character, or design? See what it is they connect to. If they like pirates, get them a pirate book. Notice their style - do they want to do what you or their father does or would they sooner be caught dead? A child can define themselves by doing things and liking things that are different from their parents. That may be a way to identify with a peer group.

Ask yourself - do they really not read at all or do they not read what you want them to read or not feel the same way about it that you do? Do they read sports in the newspaper? Do they read information on the internet? How much reading are they doing in school? We cannot control what is fun for other people and there are plenty of people whose brains don't work like ours and whose taste are not like ours. My style would not be to assign a book and have a child write a book report. I used to have to practice penmanship during the summers. I hated it, it did not make my writing any better, in fact it made me hate writing more. My handwriting is still terrible and I survive. If you give an assignment, I would make it indirect, short, and interesting to them. Perhaps a conversation at the dinner table about an article in the day's paper or about a single paragraph in a book about something that would interest them, or someone they know. Tell them an hour before dinner, 'there's a little piece in the paper today I want to ask you about. Take a look at it before dinner.' And if you ask them a question, make sure you listen to their answer. Don't say anything about reading. Don't ask them if they liked reading it. Focus on the content and on them. If they ask you a question about something they want to know, pull down a book and show them the information on the page. If they don't read it, read it to them.

Lastly, it is important in today's world that people be capable of gathering information by reading, comprehending it, and using it to reason and problem solve, so if you have a real concern that your child has a hard time doing anything of these things - get them evaluated by a neuropsychologist. For the teenager, if they are adequate but you are concerned at their attaining enough competence in one of the above areas so that they will will have access to a certain level of education, explain that to them and get them involved in some specific activity for a limited amount of time each week, perhaps with a tutor, the way you would give someone a vitamin to supplement a poor diet or an exercise to strengthen a weak limb. But if they can read at an adequate level, have many things they enjoy and excel at, and simply don't relate to it the way you and I do, that just may be a difference that, in the long run, you have to accept. Although, over time, people have been known to change.

Metaphysics on the web and lost in the world of the book (Books - Across the Nightingale Floor)

The web was awash with metaphysics yesterday. Love that. The Frontal Cortex, Pure Pedantry, and 3 Quarks Daily all posted on Boltzmann's Brain, as I did here. A lively discussion followed at Frontal Cortex. Eoin Purcell's Blog offered two posts on whether consciousness is changing and, if it, is, how narrative, books, and publishing might change along with it.


In my own plus ca change reading world, I'm about half-way through Across the Nightingale Floor, which offers a fantasy world borrowing heavily from historical Japan with a dash of Lord of the Rings mixed in. The books began with two mirroring stories, one of a young boy separated from his family and brought up in another house, the other of a young girl in similar circumstances. The chapters alternate as they shed their old world, adopt their new, and come into themselves as teenagers. At the same time, I'm becoming aware of two additional mirroring stories in the adults into whose lives they are thrown. As is inevitable in this type of story, they will come together. I'm having a delightful lost-in-the-world-of-the-book reading experience. I don't think of myself as particularly like the young boy, but the author has really allowed me to identify with him. As he is trained by his teacher in sword play, has his mental skills sharpened, and certainly magical skills as well, I find myself in that state where I am the character, I can almost feel myself possessed of that power he is developing. Then when I have to get out of my warm bed where I've been reading to brush my teeth or something mundane like that, I feel disappointed in lacking this ability and long to get back to the book where I have it again.

There's something about learning a deep skill possessed only by few, particularly an intellectual one in my case, that seems the ultimate in a powerful experience. No wonder I'm in graduate school for neuroscience. When do I get my decoder ring?

Reading Habits and other truths (Books, books, books)

Dewey made it up and Imani posted it too. I enjoyed reading it so here are my answers.

What are you reading right now?

Children of the Arbat by Anatoli Rybakov.

Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that?

It's hard to say what mood I will be in then, but aside from my school books I might try Heavy Sand, also by Rybakov, or I might start one of the books for the Outmoded Authors Challenge, I'm excited to read some May Sarton again and the Olivia Manning and Ivy Compton-Burnett have my curiosity piqued. His Dark Materials is also in the queue for a reread.

What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now?

None, unless they're in the garbage can under the sink and they shouldn't be, they're recyclable.

What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read?

The book on penmanship I had to use in summers between grades in elementary school comes in first. Being and Nothingness is a close second. I threw it across the room. Mostly, I won't finish hateful books. There are too many good ones.

What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?

The Goldbug Variations, often I give it to them too, because I know they probably won't buy it, but don't let that give you any ideas.

Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they?

Actually not. I reserve books and DVDs online and just pick them up there. There used to be bookstores that knew me, but only 3 Lives and St. Marks get regular visits from me now, and occasionally Strand. Mostly I'll drop into a random shop I'm passing, especially in places other than NYC. Through the internet I can give independent bookseller business and get what I want, they only shame is that I miss browsing and finding new stuff, which is why I still go.

Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all?

For Kings and Planets by Ethan Canin. A lot of friends I've told about it have given me a 'huh?' Also Hopeful Monsters by Nicholas Moseley which is one of the best books ever, but many of the people I've recommended it to haven't finished it.

Do you read books while you eat? While you bathe? While you watch movies or TV? While you listen to music? While you’re on the computer? While you’re having sex? While you’re driving?

While I eat yes. I don't bathe, I shower and that would be a little inconvenient. I don't have TV, I'll read while the ragazzo watches DVDs on our monitor, but if I'm watching it too then I won't read. While driving, uh...no. While having sex, hell no, but I do read in bed, as well as on public transport, and while I'm waiting for anything or anyone. I love reading in cafes or bars w/ a glass of wine or a cup of tea while I wait for a friend to show up.

When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?

I was teased for pretty much everything except reading. Most of my classmates were readers too and my friends definitely were.

What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?

Ghostwalk by Rebecca Stott was the first fiction book I read after my semester ended, so I read it straight through late into the night just because I could, but The Emporer's Children by Claire Messud kept me very late because I found it a truly compulsive read. Many years ago, one of Iris Murdoch's books, I think it was The Philosopher's Pupil, or it might have been The Message to the Planet actually kept me home from work all day - I had to call in sick.