Think Piece
Reading Remedies
I am a huge fan of traditional and analog methods of doing things. I prefer film photography to digital, watching a movie on film will always captivate me more than a digitally shot movie. Receiving and sending snail mail is more meaningful than any text and reading feels the best when it's my eyes to a page. So, it is no surprise that to me, reading on paper will always appeal more than a screen not only because I feel like it puts less strain on my eyes but because I love getting to hold a whole world in my hands. Yes, it's a book but it's also more than that. A novel is hundreds of pages composed of thousands of words all carefully ordered in a specific way. When I think about all the effort an author put into their book, I feel lucky to celebrate them by holding the words they so carefully weaved together. Having the weight of a story in my hand and struggling to flip through its stiff pages, occasionally having to lick a finger just to get to the next page is something only a physical book can do. There is such great pleasure in having to physically flip through pages and uncover what was once hidden in a story. Even though a physical book is more inconvenient for me and the environment, nothing beats a beautiful cover and the pages that follow it.
Reading motivates our innovation and challenges the world as we know it. Navigating the words of a book is an art form in itself as I will discover something different to you as we are reading the same words. So much of reading is interpretation like one would do at a museum witnessing a surrealist painting. The words have an entirely new meaning to each individual. To find what we personally need from a book we adopt a certain practice catered to our needs as readers. But "how are we to learn the art of reading for ourselves? Without attempting to lay down laws upon a subject that has not been legalized" (Woolf). This is a powerful quote by infamous female author Virginia Woolf. Her article, How Should One Read a Book, describes her personal practice and invites readers to find what works best for them. I find reading a physical book with a pen in hand, which I use for scribbling thoughts on the margins, the ideal way to read. It allows me to pause and reflect on the moments that made me feel, that impacted me. In today’s modern age where we have access to infinite entertainment on a feed, reading centers us. Taking our agency back and slowing down to take in and learn from a new world different to our reality. Not reading quickly to get to a page count but reading to fully immerse yourself in a strange experience.
I mostly read in English and will occasionally pick up a book in Spanish like something by Isabel Allende. I struggle to focus on a book when the environment is too loud or distracting. My ideal way of reading is in a comfortable seat outside surrounded by a quiet and beautiful place. A paperback is usually easier to read but I love a strong hardcover that can handle all the obstacles thrown in my bag with it. I always carry a pen and sticky notes to note my favorite pages. When I finish a particularly good book, I love sharing it with a friend. It is such a thoughtful gesture to read something that made you think of someone and then them taking the time to read through it. It is creating this shared experience that is so valuable. A connection that cannot be created via DM. Reading can be a solitary activity, but it does not need to be an isolating one. Sharing a book with a friend or reading aloud is another fascinating aspect of literature. It is a song in itself picking and choosing where to speed up and slow down or where to emphasize a word or vowel. Reading is meant to be shared.
Reading can also cure. A University of Liverpool study found that individuals diagnosed with depression benefitted from attending a weekly book club, “their social well-being [improved] by increasing personal confidence, reducing social isolation, fostering a sense of community and encouraging communication skills; their mental well-being, by improving powers of concentration, fostering an interest in new learning or new ways of understanding, and extending their capacity for thought, verbali[z]ed and internali[z]ed; their emotional and psychological well-being, by increasing self-awareness, enhancing the ability to articulate profound issues of being, and making possible a shift in internal paradigms (or the telling of a new story) in relation to self and identity” (Billington et al., 81). By sharing what we read we foster a community and strengthen our confidence. Reading a book, understanding it and then talking about it with others is so powerful and an important practice.
Oftentimes literature can be overwhelming or pretentious. A book like Tolstoy’s War and Peace can feel threatening due to its vastness. Some authors can employ intricate vocabulary forcing us to read it next to a dictionary. However, it is important that we read these books that seem scary. The books we worry we are not smart enough to read or are too complicated. Woolf described the situation, “sometimes this natural antagonism is too great to be overcome, but trial is always worth making. For these difficult and inaccessible books, with all their preliminary harshness, often yield the richest fruits in the end, and so curiously is the brain compounded that while tracts of literature repel at one season, they are appetizing and essential at another”. I found this to be true during my first read through of Sylvia Plath’s The Bell Jar. I was 16 and my AP Literature teacher introduced her as her favorite poet that attempted suicide ten times before succeeding. I was intrigued and so after reading a few of her poems I read her novel. I was completely lost, I did not see what so many people raved about. I found it a sad story, but I did not resonate with her battles and relationships. I believed I was simply not ready for the novel as I lacked some life experience that could help me connect with her words. Years later, I reread it and understood its praise. Sometimes we are not ready for a book simply because it is not a good time. I was able to understand myself a little better after reading it again. It was an unforgettable feeling seeing how a text I had already read could find me in a different moment and have a new effect on me. It is imperative that we test our limits and read the books we think we might not enjoy and see where they can take us.
I read to be transported to alternate landscapes, where I am entertained by the characters that roam this new world. I read because when I do I feel at ease and not completely overwhelmed by my reality. Much like Shannon Reed, I got into books because "I liked people, but outside my family and close friends, I found them stress-inducing" (14). I think many people are like myself and enjoy reading because it provides a break from our fast-paced and exhausting life. We can be completely transparent with the characters in books because they are fictional. We can interact with characters we will only know briefly and hear from all sort of diverse voices. Reading is also a learning tool for me. Every book I read is a new set of characters with emotions and actions I can learn from. A book I haven't read yet is filled with new information and so it is impossible not to learn from it. Through fiction I learn the realities and adversity of people alike and unlike me. I learn of their situation and the feelings that correlate to it. In the article How Stories Help Us Make Sense of the World, Enfield describes what makes a book captivating, "the very fact that people are telling a story about something shows that they regard it as out of the ordinary. This is how we learn about social norms. It is how we learn about other people" (Enfield). Discovering something new through books is just another opportunity to learn about people different to us and their experiences is "that glimpse into other times and lives, like and unlike" ours (Reed 40). It is a way for us to learn from the comfort of our living room. To explore new subjects and new voices. The stories we read give us the bigger picture and small details.
Although we are raised by assigned readings which can be tormenting and brutal, reading can truly be an enjoyable activity for everyone. Being forced to read a certain text easily removes all the fun out of reading and that's why I began reading books I picked out while also reading what was required because ultimately the goal is to enjoy reading not to miserably get through a book to fulfill an objective. Reed promotes this idea of what reading should feel like, "where the goal was to get lost in the world of a book" (Reed 38). When I discovered this potential in books, I found myself getting through them faster than I ever had. At one point in high school, I read a book a week. This is not to discount Maryanne Wolf and her idea of deep reading in the NPR interview because I agree sometimes, we must go against what we are programmed to do and really take in text through analysis, but this way of reading does not appeal to many people. If the goal is to encourage reading, I think taking an approach much like Reed's would prove most useful. If you go into a book needing to get something out of it like quotes supporting an argument, then reading becomes a chore. If you want to love to read, then reading has to be enjoyable and that means removing all expectations and just flipping to that first page.
Works Cited
Billington, Josie, et al. "An investigation into the therapeutic benefits of reading in relation to depression and well-being." Liverpool: The Reader Organization, Liverpool Health Inequalities Research Centre (2010). https://www.thereader.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/Therapeutic_benefits_of_reading_final_report_March_2011.pdf
Enfield, N. J. “How Stories Help Us Make Sense of the World.” The Mit Press Reader. 6, Nov. 2023, https://thereader.mitpress.mit.edu/how-stories-help-us-make-sense-of-the-world/?fbclid=IwAR1RNr955csPu8K8J__pBd-8DD5rDGAR9b85NzCPHOsSaecobmhzfMHrSfU
Reed, Shannon. Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out. Hanover Square Press, 6 Feb. 2024.
Woolf, Virginia. “How Should One Read a Book? Read it as if one were writing it.” The Yale Review. 1 Sept. 1926, https://yalereview.org/article/virginia-woolf-essay-how-should-read-book
Wolf, Maryanne. “How to practice 'deep reading'.” Life Kit. NPR, 30 Abril 2024, https://www.npr.org/2024/04/30/1196979151/how-to-practice-deep-reading
