(Frustrations accompany the choosing of another subjective topic: when will I stop writing about myself? I wish I knew about more things. Perhaps it’s better to be reading instead of writing, in order to know? But I like writing. Anyway, it’s not as if you could just inject knowledge into your head and be ready to use it. My desire to write outpaces the speed at which I can become knowledgeable. So I’ll continue to write about what might sound like the same thing over and over again.)
I don’t want to use this piece to make a heavy-handed argument. I already think that my experience as a reader is essential to who I am and can be applied to the biggest and smallest facets of living—this is not up for debate right now. The point of writing about this isn’t to prove anything or even give my opinion. It’s just a showing, a description, maybe best portrayed in a few vignettes:
My mother, observing aloud with a sort of bemusement, how my sister and I share a love of the materiality of books; touching them, stacking them, flipping through them; content to simply be with the books as objects.
I was an early riser as a kid. Whenever I woke up, I’d grab a book from the shelf or under my bed (reaching down, moving slowly so as not to wake up my sister—it would be ruined if she woke up), shift onto my stomach, open the book across the pillow. I took the edges of my blanket and pulled them up around my shoulders. And I read like that, in blissful quiet privacy, until things started moving around the house.
There is a photograph of me in this position. I don’t remember it being taken. In fact, when the photo was given to me as an adult, I was shocked to see this evidence of part of my childhood that I kept as such a personal memory, that I never imagined being observed. But I’m not even sure if I’m reading in the photographic version—a stuffed Powerpuff Girls doll is blocking the view of where the book would be. I am looking at the camera with a somber expression, which looks a little weird on a person so young (I’m not more than seven in this picture). As if I’ve been caught, but I kind of expected to be.
Now I'm twenty-one: recreating this. I am aware of myself recreating this. I lay on my stomach in bed, pull the blankets around my shoulders, and read Jane Eyre in the morning during a blizzard. I lived on the tenth floor of a building and my window looked out on a highway and trees. I was invisible to others but could see everything. No one else awake. My own room. Under a blanket. Insulation of snow. Quiet reading, rhythmic; I didn’t want to break the spell.
Family lore says that my mother read to us from the day we were born (I can't not say "we" when I talk about this because I'm a twin). My memory kicks in later: leaning against her left shoulder, my sister on her right, while she read. I also remember exactly when this ritual ended (though the age is blurry: nine? ten?). We started a kid's novel called Pictures of Hollis Woods, but never finished it. One night we just… stopped. After that I only read independently; solitarily.
Knowing that I read a lot, people sometimes ask me for book recommendations. They want to start reading but don’t know what book to choose. I ask them what genres interest them, usual questions. But really, the only answer is to go to a library or a bookstore and browse. Find a book that stands out for some unknown, inexplicable reason. This is as important to the experience of reading as the actual words.
I used to be worried about retention. I felt bad that I couldn’t remember details from books I’d read and enjoyed, because I almost never reread anything. Now I like reading short books fast. Sometimes I copy down certain lines. But sometimes I just read quickly. I can always read it again.
Since I started rereading, I’ve found that the first reading is really just an introduction, a wading-in or a passing-through. What you gain from a second reading is really hard to describe. When I began rereading I actually felt sad, almost a kind of identity crisis. There were suddenly so many books I’d loved and claimed that I had never really known, because I hadn’t read them twice.
Occasionally I write in my journal something like: time to go read and pretend I don’t exist. And that’s sort of what I do—get in bed, blanket up to my ears, to read something and let my “self” disappear. I need this periodically. I need to spend a chunk of an evening this way, to feel like myself (paradoxically, since I let myself go) amidst the daily repetitive noises and movements. This time creates a little space between me and the experience of being me. And even better: sometimes I read something that ignites a fire in my mind, and that makes me feel like I’m living. I’ve always taken issue with the idea of reading as “escapism” (a word I find clunky and imprecise even in its appropriate usage). Reading seems like the exact opposite of escapism to me.
It's hard to describe what is gained from a second reading, but I'll still try. You can't even know how a sentence is going to end until you get there. Now apply that to the whole piece. Every sentence takes on a new meaning, or various meanings, when you know where you're going. Real understanding starts here. Try it for yourself: read an essay once. A week later, read it again. (Maybe this is only revelatory to me? Maybe I was the last one to know?)
I guess I put a few more opinions in here than I expected to. Here’s another one. Very simply: reading is not the same as other forms of “entertainment” (clunky, imprecise!) because reading is a creative act. Reading slows things down and builds momentum. In Escape Velocity terms, reading can help release you from the gravitational pull of everything else.