Reading Habits

Laura Miller wrote this article titled “Is reading antisocial?”. Most of us would agree with her point that reading is a private activity. And yet, she points out:

“Because reading a great book can be so overwhelmingly gratifying and transformative, many of us yearn to share the experience with the people we care about. That’s why we join book groups and pester our friends to read our favorites.”

So she tried out several reading apps to make notes and read the notes of others reading the same book. But they didn't work for her for one or the other reason (strangers with totally different perspectives or friends not being able to read at/around the same time or friends not being able to settle on a common book to read in the first place).

And so Miller concluded that:

“I suspect that, despite our pervasively socially networked culture, willful idiosyncrasy remains the very essence of reading. A book, and especially a novel, is a world you can enter at a time of your own choosing, and the world itself can be chosen from a seemingly infinite array of alternatives to suit whichever mood has taken you. That’s one of the things we love about reading.”

Maybe she should take solace in the fact that at least she has friends who read. As Alex Balk wrote so very sarcastically about where the world is headed:

“The good news is now we also have tablets and smartphones with which to instruct children that they need never be alone with their own thoughts when there is a surface nearby on which something will pop up to provide distraction, so soon enough everyone will be ruined for sustained contemplation and we will thus hasten along this species' destruction in a way that simply fucking up the planet through development and use of fossil fuels might not achieve on its own.”

I'll end with a toast to those who do read: I’m sure you didn’t know you were helping save the world!