Bookreading: Part II

In my previous post, I described a scenario—rather, a lifetime—for the modern day individual who may have enjoyed reading as a child but has no time to do so anymore.  This representative individual may ask, why read?  What’s the point?  Why, when I don’t have time?  Why, when I don’t get anything out of it besides a story in which time I could have watched multiple episodes of my favorite T.V. show?  Well, let me answer your questions.

Why read?  What’s the point?  Reading does for you what many other activities cannot.  Some of the great writers of the past have given multiple reasons for reading.  “Books support us in our solitude and keep us from being a burden to ourselves,” said Jeremy Collier.  If books are able to stop us from being lonely as well as prevent us from becoming burdens to ourselves, what else can they do?  Harold Bloom maintained that “reading well is one of the great pleasures—a healing pleasure—that solitude can afford you.”  If you don’t enjoy being alone, books support you in your solitude and also provide pleasure and healing that you would not experience otherwise in your solitude.  Even if you do enjoy being alone, reading increases that pleasure.  I love solitude, and oft times reading a book has brought me great enjoyment and peace in my reclusion.  Kafka wrote, “A book must be an ice-axe to break the seas frozen inside our soul.”  Although I never cared for Kafka’s Metamorphosis, Kafka is a good writer, and I have seen in my own reading experience how this quote is true.  Many times while reading I have felt the words on the page prick at my heart, evoking in me peculiar and unfamiliar emotions.  I could not recount how many books have served as ice-axes to “break the seas frozen inside [my] soul.” 

Why read, when we don’t have time?  Sherri Chasin Calvo said, “If you have never said ‘Excuse me’ to a parking meter or bashed your shins on a fireplug, you are probably wasting too much valuable reading time.”  Although this was said with a smile, the principle is true.  If you are not taking the time to read books, you are wasting time.  Make reading a priority.  If you absolutely cannot find the time to sit down and read a book, use audio books while driving or exercising instead of listening to music or watching television.  Take a book with you to work to read during your lunch break.  When your junior high and high school aged children read books for school, read those books at the same time so that you can talk about them together (this will provide the added benefit of family time and closeness).  There is always time to read; you just have to look for it. 

Why else ought we to read?  What do we get out of it besides a story?  Those of you who are Latter-day Saints have likely Doctrine and Covenants 88:118, which reads, “Seek ye out of the best books words of wisdom; seek learning, even by study and also by faith.”  This is a commandment direct from God!  Along with the fact that reading is a commandment, 1 Nephi 3:7 tells us that God will give no commandments unto the children of men without preparing a way for them to accomplish those commandments.  Therefore, one cannot argue that there is no time to read because the Lord will always help those who seek to obey His commandments.  And if we want to learn words of wisdom, Heavenly Father would have us read the best books.  You know how to recognize a good book when you read one, and “It is what you read when you don't have to that determines what you will be when you can't help it” (Oscar Wilde).  Books can indeed have this profound an effect on your person.  It has been said that “fiction reveals truths that reality obscures” (attributed to either Jessamyn West or Ralph Waldo Emerson).  How many of us have learned the truth from Huckleberry Finn that “You can’t pray a lie”?  Who has not learned the value of trust from Shakespeare’s Othello, or the dangers of revenge from The Count of Monte Cristo?  As we read, book after book teaches us important lessons and truths: “From every book invisible threads reach out to other books; and as the mind comes to use and control those threads the whole panorama of the world's life, past and present, becomes constantly more varied and interesting, while at the same time the mind's own powers of reflection and judgment are exercised and strengthened” (Helen E. Haines).  And it is not important just to be well-read: one ought to reread good books, for as Clifton Fadiman says, “When you reread a classic you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than was there before.”  As you read, you change.  This is the power of books, and it is true for both good and bad books.  Oscar Wilde knew that, which is why he held that what you voluntarily read makes you who you are.  Books can make you into a better person if you choose to read good ones and let them change your life.