Love of reading Archives

I read a lot of books. If you notice, most days on this blog are devoted to book reviews. This happened to be the rare day when I had no finished books waiting for review. Last year, I read 219 books. It’s an occupational hazard of book reviewers! I’m not bragging because I know a number who read more. Equally, I know a number of very happy people who love reading who have read far less. What’s important is that you find enjoyment and enrichment in whatever you read. Here are some things that help me make the most of my reading time.

Eliminate distractions. This is the biggy! When you read, read. I always read better when my smartphone is plugged in somewhere else. Don’t try to multi-task, especially with loved ones.
A good reading location. This means a chair that offers comfort and support and good light (neither to dim nor too glaring. If you are an older reader, you probably need more light, unless you’ve had cataract surgery. I like it when I can rest my book on a table, though the binding on books don’t always lend themselves to that.
Good eyewear. My eye doctor learned I read a lot and gave me a prescription for reading glasses in addition to my regular glasses that include a reading prescription. This has so improved my reading experience.
I always have several books going at a time. Partly this reflects reviewing where this allows me to have a book I’ve finished most days. The other thing is that I tend to want to take a break after reading a stretch in a book, usually about 30 pages of non-fiction and 40 pages of fiction.
Take stretch breaks between books. For me, it’s a way of clearing my mental palate. As readers, we also need to move our bodies. Usually, I don’t read more than 30 to 45 minutes at a stretch without getting up, maybe doing a household chore or two or at least refilling my coffee cup or water bottle.
Read when you are most alert. Sometimes a half hour nap or walk perks me up enough that my mind is refreshed. You don’t read much when you are nodding off–usually the same paragraph ten times.
Reading expands to fill the time you give it. And usually with little difference in comprehension. I can read 30 pages in 30 minutes, or 45, or an hour. I find that if I am determined, I can do it in 30, and sometimes less if I focus. Often we are slowed by distractions or going back over what we’ve read. This will vary, of course with the density of what we are reading–not only the words on the page but the complexity of the ideas. Sometimes a skim to get the outline of a plot or argument followed by slower reading helps with dense material.
Reading with others. Recently, a friend mentioned wanting to read Charles Taylor’s A Secular Age–a significant book coming in at over 900 pages. I have too, and we decided to tackle it together, beginning April 1. I’ll let you know how it goes. Book clubs do the same thing with more people. The ones I’ve appreciated most are those where we get into books we’ve wanted to read, often ones that have sat on the shelves of some of us.
I usually have a series or two and a good one will spur on my reading. Right now, I’m reveling in the Brother Cadfael stories as well as Margery Allingham’s Albert Campion series. These are just great fun! Louise Penney’s Gamache series got me through the years of the pandemic–allowing me to lose myself in her writing during those grim times.
When you find a writer you like, read all you can by them. I find the more I read such writers, the more I get “in sync” with them, whether it is Wendell Berry’s essays, or Willa Cather’s fiction, my discovery of last year. When I discovered David McCullough, I read everything by him. I miss him.

Those are some of the things that have worked for me. If they don’t work for you, we’re just different. I think all of us who love reading live under the awareness of “so many books and so little time.” Some of what I’ve written here falls under making the most of our reading time so that we might read a bit more of those books. But another part of what I’ve written relates to getting the most enjoyment and enrichment out of our time. If that is happening when you read, you are reading enough. And don’t let anyone tell you any different!

The rise in book challenges and bans is disturbing for a number of reasons. In 2019, 566 books were challenged. That number has jumped to over 2500 in 2022, according to NPR. I don’t want to add to the spate of articles about this phenomenon except to say that the mark of a free society is that we mutually agree to protect the freedom of those who are saying things we don’t like. The arguments that those who are on the religious and cultural right use to challenge certain books can be used by others to challenge or ban the Bible and religious texts.

Instead, I want to address another aspect of the reading lives of our children that I do not hear mentioned–children are reading less, especially just for the fun of it. Fewer are cultivating the lifelong love of reading that carries so many benefits from being lifelong learners to greater empathy and expanded horizons. For example, in both 1984 and 2012, 53 percent of nine year olds read for fun every day. That number has dropped to 42 percent in 2020, according to a Pew Research Center article. Meanwhile the number of children who never read for fun has risen from 9 percent in 1984 to 16 percent in 2020.

This seems to me what we should be talking about.

Instead we are sending the message that books (at least some of them) are dangerous. We are de-funding libraries, where generations have learned to love reading, especially among those of low and moderate incomes. Instead of books having warm associations of bringing people together around the love of story, we are fighting about books. I suspect the kids have noticed.

While these are good reasons to re-consider our culture wars on books, it is also important that we pay attention to the ubiquitous presence of screens in children’s lives. Tweens and teens are spending seven to ten hours a day using online media. While part of this is educational, a good amount comes in various forms of social media or video gaming. Now isn’t some of this actually a good thing? We are reading when we are on the internet in at least some instances. Yet there are real questions as to whether this is changing the way we think, and particularly our ability to focus and concentrate for extended periods, important for solving complex problems, learning intricate processes, and following an extended argument. This article at Online College offers a balanced perspective on this question.

It seems to me that there are some good places where we can begin

Agreeing on screen free-times in households. You can do anything you want that doesn’t involve a screen.
Read aloud together. So much of the love of reading comes in shared time reading stories everyone loves.
We need to find ways to stop opposing reading for comprehension and reading for fun. It seems that the fun of reading ought only be enhanced by understanding what we are reading. Too often, I hear that the focus of reading comprehension is for the passing of standardized tests. I don’t think it was always like this. I loved reading, and I did just fine on standardized tests.
It also seems that reading education is often focusing on parts of texts rather than whole stories. A recent Atlantic article asks if this is part of the problem. Children love whole stories.
It seems that we need to help children find the kinds of books they like to read and at the level where they are able to read, or perhaps stretching that just a bit with something they are really interested in. Librarians are great at this and ought to have all the resources they need to do this.
Perhaps we also need to consider our own reading habits. Children are great imitators. My mom loved to read and often we’d either read or talk about what we were reading at lunch times.
Do we have books around the home and do children have books of their own? I remember Scholastic Book Clubs and being able to choose a couple books that I could order and have for my own. This is also the genius, it seems, of Dolly Parton’s Imagination Library in which children can be signed up to receive a free book in the mail each month. C.S. Lewis grew up in a home filled with books and loved reading from an early age.

Rather than talking about what books shouldn’t be available to our children, a matter over which various constituencies disagree, why can’t we focus on something I suspect most thoughtful individuals do agree upon–that cultivating the love of reading in our children, not just a proficiency measured by standardized tests, is a worthy goal of our educational efforts? We cannot leave this just to lawmakers, librarians, and teachers, however. We ought to give this attention in our homes and places of worship and in the various extra-curricular activities in which children participate. We could introduce children who love sports to great sports writing. For those who love the arts, there is a wealth of books on the arts. Budding scientists may find math puzzle books and science texts and biographies to be great fun.

Will we allow ourselves to be distracted by the purveyors of outrage into crusades against books or will we pay attention to the fundamentally important work of cultivating in our children a love of reading? If we do not, I fear those who would ban will be far more successful than they dreamed. It is not that children will not read books considered “inappropriate” or “woke.” It won’t be a problem. Children just will not read. Period.