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Blogs by Barbara Forte Abate
The Joy of Reading 2/12/2011 6:37:18 AM
Remember what it was like when you first learned to read? Whether it was the adventures of Dick, Jane, and Sally, or your older sister's collection of Archie comics, it was a thrill to turn the pages and devour the words all on your own. No longer in wait of someone to read your favorite story or restricted to books whose tales were told via pictures. Your life was forever changed - you were a reader - till death do us part.
Apparently that was then and this is now. Somewhere along the line of learning to read, coveting books and nurturing that private library you were cultivating across the built-in shelf headboard of your bunkbed, some of us drifted away from the joys of reading - trading-up, or so it was thought, to modern entertainments provided first by Videos, then game systems, DVD's, computer games, and TiVo (on the chance you did happen to miss something on the tube.)
Last week while waiting in line at the grocery store, I overheard the friendly and enthusiastically chatty cashier, proudly remark to the customer in front of me that he never reads. He said this with pride, almost as if he were broadcasting some grand achievement worthy of praise. Nope, he doesn't read - he's a "TV guy." Was I horrified by the statement simply as an author whose own novel is less then a month away from release? Or is it that his remark came across as no less incredible a statement then if he'd announced that he doesn't brush his teeth or wash his hair.
To never pick-up a book, magazine, or newspaper - even if only on the rarified occasion - is akin to turning off your mind and shelving your very thoughts. That intricate network of roads and pathways that snaps awake to reflect, lend interior comment, register observation, or simply wonder, in response to whatever it is you are ingesting in your thoughts -- not only at the moment, but even long afterwards; as characters, events, and ideas continue to dart and settle. Reading - it does a mind good.
