A little while ago, I was at a Little League game with my Droid Eris phone. I checked the spotlight on the Google News feed, looked at Open Salon and read some stuff to comment on later (log-ins are annoying on my Droid), made a quick pass to Edge.org, and finally opened my Kindle App to pick up War and Peace (I’m slightly guilty about not reading the hard copy). I stopped reading when my friend’s kid was at bat, to cheer him on, then picked up when Anna Pavlovna’s reception was in full swing.
What struck me was the sheer socialness of it all: Pavlovna’s party, and her decisions of who to engage with and who not and who must be respected and who should be shunned, was not so different that the banter going back and forth at on Open Salon, which was not so different than the op-ed pieces I gravitated towards from the NYT and Washington and Huffington Posts. It wasn’t so different from the parents we liked at the Little League game, and the parents we disapproved of, either.
Mainly, I was struck by how my reading habits had become some kind of virtual party of digital intelligentsia, held together by distributed, open text and interactive web technology. Instead of working the room, I was surfing the room. From the Little League bleachers, no less.
And it also made me think about how readers have changed since Tolstoy’s day: or have we? Portions of War and Peace were serialized in the magazine The Russian Messenger between 1865 and 1867. And I was rather amused that the characters of War and Peace seemed as vibrant and alive as those I read about from other, supposedly more contemporary sources: even as those who I related to at work and church and my daily life.
And I had hope, for a moment, that maybe we weren’t loosing our collective conscious minds, and maybe reading really hasn’t changed that much, after all. Just, the parties we get invited to are different, perhaps more diverse, with a disembodied sense of time, that we can access asynchronously, both faster and slower, as we choose.
The last time I read a paper novel was Franzen’s Freedom. It felt like having an affair, I must admit. I had to rendezvous with it. I had to steal away in the night, in the guest bed, with reading lamps. I couldn’t lug it with me to read at my lunch break or in the few minutes when I was waiting for someone in their office. I read it deeply, emotionally, it felt important to me, like an important book for my generation. I didn’t really like these people…but I knew them. They were real, and pointed out how silly and obsessive and cruel we Americans can be, even to the ones we love.
Anyhow. In thinking about reading, I came up with a few sets of lists that I’d like to share, that frame the idea of reading, in what I hope is not too academic, but a practical way.
5 Reasons to Read:
- Information. News, current events, politics, crime, professional development, product reviews, dangers, threats, and the occasional joys and triumphs of the world
- Inspiration. Religious books, self-help books, how to books, cook books, gardening and other craft books. Books about art, music, etc. Some poetry.
- Relationships. Friends and family communications: Facebook, e-mail, letters, cards
- Learning. Vetted, sequential information on a specific subject, expert opinions, classical texts, advanced books and journals on certain subjects and disciplines
- Pleasure. Escape, arousal, empathy, aesthetic enjoyment, catharsis, satisfaction, challenge
5 Ways of Reading:
- Deep, close, immersed, long periods
- Distance, scanning, skimming, short bursts
- Self-selected reading
- Required, imposed, or filtered reading
- Reading out loud, collective simultaneous group reading
5 Reading Mediums:
- Online news, news aggregators, newspapers, magazines, journals
- Personal blogs, collective blogs, business websites,
- Digital books, e-readers, Kindle, Nook, ePub formts, PDFs, Project Gutenberg, Google Books
- Print books, magazines, journals, newspapers
- Print newsletters, letters, flyers, posters
Look at this wealth of opportunity! What isn’t there to read?
People keep fearing that reading is dead, but I just don’t feel that way. I feel like I’m reading more than ever, and part of that is because that the internet does text so well, and as of now, audio and video are still a little behind the curve. It’s still the words that load fastest.
Never have we had access to so much information…
But does one go to a party to get information? I suppose. But mainly, people want to party to get to know people, have fun, and ward off the existential loneliness of being. And that’s a function somewhat different than data crunching, and far more humane. It’s about the choices we make, of content, of effort, of attention. And it is a serious responsibility.
So, I don’t think that reading is going anywhere…although there is a difference about reading War and Peace on a Droid, rather than in an old musty paperback passed down from your grandfather. But I don’t think it’s a lesser experience. It’s sort of amazing that Tolstoy’s story still hauntingly fresh.
But enough about me. I’m curious to know. Why and what do you read now, and how?