A couple of years ago, one of my brothers admitted with only the slightest embarrassment that he had not read a book since graduating from high school. His diploma was bestowed in 1976. In spite of that fact, he has done well. He lives in a fancy house, drives a nice car and can afford to take a vacation whenever he pleases. The sports page of the Dallas Morning News is pretty much the extent of his reading.
Suffice it to say, we have different perspectives. I can recall being in a contest in fourth grade at Kiest Elementary School in Dallas. Its purpose was to determine which student could read the most books. I came in second place, plowing through about 25 books in that school year. I have never really stopped. When I went off to UT in 1971, every professor assigned voluminous reading which I compounded with my own selections. I genuinely wanted to learn what the authors had to impart.
When I buy a book, I write my name on the title page, sometimes adding my location and the year. It thus becomes a permanent part of my library. I have never hesitated to underline and annotate to my heart’s content. Doing so makes reading an interactive process. Underlining serves to emphasize key facts or concepts. Annotating (also known as writing “marginalia”) can do the same, but I sometimes use it to express surprise or even disagreement with the author. My ever-evolving set of opinions or biases is on full display in every book I read. Woe unto the author who indulges in politically correct pandering; in the pages of my books, I often set them straight by scribbling out offensive terms and replacing them with those I find more suitable. Once in a while, I correspond with the author of a book I have read.
Do I love my books as much as I would love my own flesh and blood? Oh, probably not. But they are definitely a part of me and my identity. At 1407 Drake Avenue in Austin, where I lived for 16 years, an entire room was given over to my library. Book shelves on two sides went from the floor to the ceiling. It may have contained 1,000 books, but I never stopped to count them. Until I moved to Korea, I had a file listing each of my books—categorized by topic.
Nowadays, some people read books in electronic format. For my mother’s 80th birthday, I bought her a Kindle e-reader. I first learned about these devices when I was teaching English in Daegu. One of my fellow American teachers had one and just raved about it. According to him, Kindles and their various competitors have all sorts of advantages. They are lightweight, you can buy books cheaply, you have instant access to a dictionary and other reference manuals, and on and on. I have seen statistics about the rising number of e-books bought, and its corollary, the declining number of conventional books.
Still, I do not anticipate getting a Kindle for myself any time soon. I like books you can hold in your hand, and my above-cited tendency to underline and annotate is too deeply ingrained to abandon now. I visited the USA in February 2011 and made stops at four Half-Price Bookstores. I bought 41 books—all but two of them pertaining to history of some kind—and shipped them home to Korea. This is indicative of two things: I am here for the long term, and I am serious about reading. In contrast to an alarming number of people such as my brother, I see reading as a crucial part of the learning process that should never end. Furthermore, reading makes me a better writer.
As for the Kindle, some of its fans would go so far as to label me a Luddite. That really hurts my feelings. You know the Luddites. They were the textile workers in early 19th century England who feared the changes wrought by the Industrial Revolution and destroyed many mechanized looms, notwithstanding the awful working conditions in their factories. In modern usage, the term “Luddite” has come to mean any person who resists technological changes. It hardly applies to me. Although I am not exactly on the cutting edge of the high-tech world, I use a computer daily. Indeed, I could not live without the Dell laptop on which I am typing these words. The research for my four most recent books was done entirely online, and they were published by an entity that prints books on demand. Electronic distribution, by the way, is available.
I read books these days side-by-side with the computer. A randomly chosen example follows. In late 2010, I devoured Charles H. Martin’s superb Benching Jim Crow / The Rise and Fall of the Color Line in Southern College Sports, 1890-1980. On page 166, I came across a reference to Everett Case—a man with whom I was already familiar, but I wanted to know more. I set the book down, pivoted a few degrees rightward to my computer and Googled him. Hello, Wikipedia! Beyond what Martin told me, I learned that this Indiana native went to North Carolina State University and helped turn the Atlantic Coast Conference into a basketball hotbed; that he was responsible for a number of innovations in the game; that he was nicknamed “the Gray Fox”; and that he got caught cheating in 1956.
I go from book to computer and back constantly. It slows me down somewhat, but pure speed is not the goal. The goal is learning, understanding and by extension, having a richer life. In the end, what difference does it make whether one prefers bound books or those available on a Kindle? The point is to read. As Sir Richard Steele (1672-1729) said, “Reading is to the mind what exercise is to the body.” Wise words from the Irishman, and as it happens, I do both—reading and exercising—every day.
Add Comment