ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED BY THE SOMERS RECORD (05-03-18)
Last weekend the Somers Library held a used book sale, and the reason I mention it is because I never want to see the day when people say, "Wow! A used book sale! I wonder what they used them for?" I truly believe that a book is by far the best value of any commodity in history. In every novel there is art, culture, entertainment and history. If you're a lover of the arts you could buy Jackson Pollack's "No. 5, 1948" for about 150 million bucks. OR, you could let my dog produce something similar for free by drinking her water too fast, then spend one dollar at the book fair on "To Kill a Mockingbird," and change your life forever.
Someone once told me that I seem to know very little about a lot of subjects. I took this as a compliment, and It's true that I do read a lot. I only read fiction, however, so I know a lot of things that other people made up. Which is better than nothing. My love for reading blossomed in the fifth grade, and I directly blame Mrs. Moyantshef, my teacher, for getting me interested in this time-consuming hobby. Every day she read out loud to us from the book, "The Phantom Tollbooth." It captured my imagination, which is still held hostage to this day, tied up in the basement, barely subsisting on a diet of nouns, verbs and adjectives. And now my den is a library of over 1500 titles, and I have read them all. The titles, not the books.
I'm kind of a slow reader. My mind wanders, and it doesn't always tell me where it went. Sometimes I read the same page two or three times, to see if anything has changed. But eventually I get through the book, and that experience is a partnership between the writer and myself. The writer does the easy part, putting down a bunch of words on a page. I'm the one who does the casting, direction, wardrobe, lighting and set decoration. It's a lot of work but a labor of love.
For those of you who e-read e-books on an e-reader, you're e-missing out on something. We live in a fast-paced society, one of instant gratification and short attention spans. Reading a book seems like an archaic waste of time by modern standards. But there are very few achievements in life that are as gratifying as the ones you have to work for. I once saw a picture of Michelangelo's mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The picture was nice, but when I finally braved the traffic and the lines to see the Sistine Chapel in person, it was totally different than what I expected. The scene was smaller and more intimate, and there was complete reverential silence, except for a security guard screaming at the top of his lungs every four seconds, "NO PHOTO! NO VIDEO!" Whoever snapped that picture that I saw must have done it in three seconds flat and then ran like hell.
But I can read the writing on the wall, because it's the one time I don't need my glasses. The future's going to start slowly, insidiously: the e-reader is going to offer you a dictionary definition of words that it predicts that you might not know. You'll click on the word, and BOOM, through the magic of the internet, you now know the meaning of "life," or whatever word you clicked on. Maybe there will be a picture there too. Maybe a video, or an ad. All of a sudden you're online, just like always, algorithms telling you things you already know. And the raw experience of reading has been cheapened and homogenized by the erosion of your mind's ingenuity (Snow White and Sleeping Beauty showed up in the same gown! Who wore it better??). You will become the passive spectator of this amazing experience instead of its architect.
So keep reading, read an actual book, read an actual newspaper, support real creativity wherever it lies. And if you come across a word that is abstruse, you can look it up in the dictionary the old-fashioned way, like I just had to.
Last weekend the Somers Library held a used book sale, and the reason I mention it is because I never want to see the day when people say, "Wow! A used book sale! I wonder what they used them for?" I truly believe that a book is by far the best value of any commodity in history. In every novel there is art, culture, entertainment and history. If you're a lover of the arts you could buy Jackson Pollack's "No. 5, 1948" for about 150 million bucks. OR, you could let my dog produce something similar for free by drinking her water too fast, then spend one dollar at the book fair on "To Kill a Mockingbird," and change your life forever.
Someone once told me that I seem to know very little about a lot of subjects. I took this as a compliment, and It's true that I do read a lot. I only read fiction, however, so I know a lot of things that other people made up. Which is better than nothing. My love for reading blossomed in the fifth grade, and I directly blame Mrs. Moyantshef, my teacher, for getting me interested in this time-consuming hobby. Every day she read out loud to us from the book, "The Phantom Tollbooth." It captured my imagination, which is still held hostage to this day, tied up in the basement, barely subsisting on a diet of nouns, verbs and adjectives. And now my den is a library of over 1500 titles, and I have read them all. The titles, not the books.
I'm kind of a slow reader. My mind wanders, and it doesn't always tell me where it went. Sometimes I read the same page two or three times, to see if anything has changed. But eventually I get through the book, and that experience is a partnership between the writer and myself. The writer does the easy part, putting down a bunch of words on a page. I'm the one who does the casting, direction, wardrobe, lighting and set decoration. It's a lot of work but a labor of love.
For those of you who e-read e-books on an e-reader, you're e-missing out on something. We live in a fast-paced society, one of instant gratification and short attention spans. Reading a book seems like an archaic waste of time by modern standards. But there are very few achievements in life that are as gratifying as the ones you have to work for. I once saw a picture of Michelangelo's mural on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. The picture was nice, but when I finally braved the traffic and the lines to see the Sistine Chapel in person, it was totally different than what I expected. The scene was smaller and more intimate, and there was complete reverential silence, except for a security guard screaming at the top of his lungs every four seconds, "NO PHOTO! NO VIDEO!" Whoever snapped that picture that I saw must have done it in three seconds flat and then ran like hell.
But I can read the writing on the wall, because it's the one time I don't need my glasses. The future's going to start slowly, insidiously: the e-reader is going to offer you a dictionary definition of words that it predicts that you might not know. You'll click on the word, and BOOM, through the magic of the internet, you now know the meaning of "life," or whatever word you clicked on. Maybe there will be a picture there too. Maybe a video, or an ad. All of a sudden you're online, just like always, algorithms telling you things you already know. And the raw experience of reading has been cheapened and homogenized by the erosion of your mind's ingenuity (Snow White and Sleeping Beauty showed up in the same gown! Who wore it better??). You will become the passive spectator of this amazing experience instead of its architect.
So keep reading, read an actual book, read an actual newspaper, support real creativity wherever it lies. And if you come across a word that is abstruse, you can look it up in the dictionary the old-fashioned way, like I just had to.
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