Reading

I have posted a lot about the books I've read. I love to read, and always am in the middle of something. I often carry a book or a copy of the New Yorker around with me, because you never know when you might be stuck in a line, or in some other place waiting. And I usually read when I'm at the gym.

I have always loved to read. I started reading at a young age, and remember the stacks of library books I would check out from the local bookmobile. Making it through them was one of my favorite summer experiences.

For the first 20 or so years of my reading career, I mostly read fiction (although I do remember reading quite a few biographies as a kid). But, in the last 10 years, I have come to appreciate non-fiction much more and probably read more of it than fiction now. I think that the switch was fueled by the realization that I could learn so so much about (what I perceive as) the real world. (Not to say that I couldn't learn about the real world from reading fiction, but it's obviously quite a bit different.) However, I will never be one who doesn't have time to read fiction--and am quite happy to occasionally pick up some escapist novel.

Anyway, last month for our book group, we read the transcript of a BYU devotional talk given by Van Gessel, the dean of the humanities department. There were a lot of interesting ideas in it about culture and literature. He quotes Sven Birkets, and I've thought a lot about this since:

To open a book voluntarily is at some level to remark the insufficienty either of one's life or of one's orientation toward it. When we read, we not only transplant ourselves to the place of the text, but we modify our natural angle of regard upon all things; we reposition the self in order to to see differently.

Gessel uses this to further his argument about how reading good literature (he mostly considers this the "classics") engenders empathy and understanding for people and situations that we could otherwise not gain to nearly the same extent. But for me, the impact of the quotation speaks more to my need to a window peering out of my very narrow life right now. I am home with my kids. I am physically in my home for a great deal of time each day. My daily concerns center on feeding, clothing, entertaining, and keeping peace (or physically restraining) my children. I get weary of it. But because at this moment there is not a lot of chance to have a substantial change in my circumstances, I turn to reading as an outlet. It give my mind something to chew on. And with my recent discovery of audio books (and my very exciting christmas present of an IPod Shuffle), I don't have to feel guilty (as I sometimes do) to sit down with a book while neglecting my home. Instead, I can listen to a book as I do the dishes and clean up.

Someday when my circumstances are different, or when we make a change in the way we do things at home, then I hope to have other outlets and develop other interests and talent. But, for the moment, I am very grateful for books. (And, I must say, for our library system that allows me to order in any book I want and have it delivered to my local branch.)