In praise of reading, part I

I missed the flip. The pause that comes with the page curve and turn. Bending a corner. I didn’t realize how much I missed it until Michael asked me a question: “What’s the best book you read last year?”

Turned out I hadn’t read any books that year. And the horror? I hadn’t even really noticed.

Like a lot of folks, I grew up defining my life by the books I’d read. Judy Blume led to Narnia. Heinlein to Vonnegut to Garp. Be Here Now showed up somewhere along the line. Then one of my brothers introduced me to Richard Brautigan, and my love of Brautigan got me to run a lil poem-of-the-day mailing list for a few years. Wonderful times. Wonderful writers.

But sitting there with Michael, aghast!, I realized that over the last decade, I’d changed. I was still a book owner. Sometimes a book buyer. But rarely a book reader. 

So that was then. In the last 12 months, I’ve managed to find my way back to book world bit by bit. And this? This is a post for my fellow lapsers – folks who, like me, have let book reading sort of slip away.

Just a few days after that coffee shop chat, I picked up a small book I’d skipped over in college. From there I read a pair of wonderful graphic novels, several non-fictions, some poetry, and a modest stack of fabulous novels. Several modern classics. Some light reading too. I’m still not one of those 50+/year folks, but books have become part of most days, and every week.

And page by page, I’ve been surprised to re-learn just how good reading is for my brain, for my mood, for my life. (And yeah, I went all the way to “for my life” because reading also makes me excessively bold in my “third item in a list of three” choices. Who knew?)

The good news? I can report that for the core benefits, it turns out it almost doesn’t matter what you read as long as you enjoy it. The very act of reading a book has value. 

For me, it’s meant:

• A little less time on my phone, on social media, watching TV. I enjoy all these things, but like almost everyone, I’m looking for balance.
• Being a bit more present, more focused, even when I’m re-reading sentences when that focus slips. Book reading demands (genially) that you single-task.
• Following a thread from day to day. And the flip side – the gift of closure. Boy I missed that sensation of putting a book down, done.

Above all, it’s meant a return to seeking out a special, golden kind of solitude – a little more time spent in my head. Me, the author, and their world.

Looking back, I had somehow convinced myself reading was a virtue. That I was being good by reading, bad by not reading. That’s not much of a motivator.

What I forgot was that book time can be the best kind of selfish act. A massage for the mind.

And with all that, here’s my advice: If like me you’ve wound up on the wrong side the reading rainbow, don’t sweat it. Even better than having a best book for 2019 is having a first book for 2020.