The Need to Read

This is my plug for reading for pleasure, a habit that's in steep decline in the U.S. Research I've done for a grant I'm writing confirms this sorry news. Americans read for fun on average 7 minutes per day. We spend hours, at times slumped and drooling, in front of the tube. My sons have pretty much replaced TV with video gaming, which I suppose provides training in finger dexterity, enabling faster text messaging ability, but I'm not sure if the benefits go beyond that.

I'm reading two books at the moment, one my daughter Mariel recommended called "The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down" and another entitled "Things Fall Apart." I've been in a World Lit mode, which means I've been all over the globe sampling various cultures and trying to get my geography straight. "The Spirit Catches You" by Anne Fadiman is a non-fiction account of the acute culture clash between Hmong refugees and American doctors in Merced, California. The Hmong are an ethnic Chinese people who migrated to Southeast Asia in the 70's and eventually moved to the U.S. (and other countries). Chinua Achebe, a Nigerian, wrote "Things Fall Apart" in 1959, an assignment in my son Harry's English class. He is kindly allowing me to read it. I'm not very far into either of these books, but I'll admit that I'm entirely ignorant of the cultures they describe.

Just before starting these books, I finished "A Fortunate Life" by A.B. Facey. Facey lived most of his life in the Australian bush, but saw a bit of the world when he fought at Gallipoli during WWI. His was a harsh, impoverished life, with no formal education (he taught himself how to read and write), and little in the way of family support. Prior to that book, I read "Dirt Music" by Tim Winton, a novel that takes place in present-day Western Australia. I'm lucky to have a book-loving friend in Melbourne who's been sending me books (including an Aussie phrase book) I'd never run into otherwise. "Dirt Music," with its references to Thomas Hardy and other English writers of the late 19th - early 20th-century, made me want to re-visit that literary period, and so I re-read Hardy's "Return of the Native." If you ever want to dwell on human frailty and futility, Hardy's your man. Ditto if you want to improve your vocabulary, and your reading ability in general.

What books have you read lately that you'd recommend? My niece mentioned "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" by Junot Diaz (I think she met the author at a reading), so I've requested it from the library.

If you're brave enough to discover just how much you don't know, read.