One of my goals this year is to read four books a week. I am also trying to exercise three times a week. It is more likely that I will read four books a week.
I'm pretty sure I can do this, since I've been a dedicated reader since I first learned to string words into a sentence. Being a reader helped me become a writer, and I'm positive that good reading skills and a love of reading helped make me a good student in school.
One of my theories in life is that reading helps make you smart and it helps keep you smart. I have a deathly fear of losing my eyesight and being unable to read. I am convinced that if I can't read books, I will gradually grow dumber and dumber until I start voting Republican and sending fan mail to George W. Bush.
If only more people would read, I think, we'd all be smarter. Imagine: more smart people = fewer people wearing butt-crack exposing pants, watching reality TV shows and trying out for "American Idol."
One thing I hate to hear is "No one reads anymore." I've heard it a million times and it's just such a lie! Maybe not an intentional lie, more like an urban myth. A society where no one reads, next on Geraldo. Book selling is still a huge business. And since money rules everything in our capitalist nation, people are reading and buying books or Barnes and Noble would close its doors and open up Stores for the Very Dumb throughout the country.
Okay, some of those books are pure crap. My friends, we live in a crap-filled world. TV is mostly crap, but still, I am not selling my TV anytime soon. And I will keep reading books, at the risk of reading some crap, until my eyes quit working or my heart stops beating. Whichever comes first.
And in the era of texting, emails and voice messaging, I can see where a person might think "no one" is reading. But I know tons of people who read. They may not read what I read, they may read much more high falutin' literature than I do, or they may read People magazine and consider that sufficient. So what, they're reading. Oh, and for the technology-obsessed out there, Kindle is a nifty little device where you can download entire books onto a small, hand-held apparatus and read the book anywhere. I still like the feel of pages under my fingertips and the smell of ink when I'm reading, but a lot of people swear by Kindles. But hey, I still write actual pen-and-paper letters to people and actually mail them, with a stamp and everything. So I'm not seeing a Kindle in my future anytime soon.
Every time I read a book (well, unless it's a piece of crap book), I get to go somewhere else, be someone else, learn more about the world, even if it's a made-up world. I've even read a book about one of my ancestors, John Berry Hill, who was a prospector and went to California during the Gold Rush. Fascinating reading, especially when you know it's your own family member.
I just read two books by Stiegg Larsson, a Swedish writer who was also a social activist against racism and right-wing extremism in his home country. The books are set in Sweden, a country I previously knew very little about. Now, I may not know it all and I wasn't there in person, but I feel like my mind has stretched just a little bit more to include the people of Sweden and how they live. Larsson died in 2004 of a heart attack, before his three novels were published. Published posthumously, they were bestsellers. Aspiring novelists, pay attention here! Write that book! You know you want to, so just do it and see what happens. None of us lives forever.
For booklovers like me, keep reading. Pick up a Harlequin romance, check out "War and Peace" from the library or go through your own bookshelves and re-read one of your childhood favorites, like "The Wind in the Willows".
Just read. I promise you it will make you smarter. Anyway, you will feel smarter.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
Thursday, January 21, 2010
Ordinary Days
Today is an ordinary day, the day when I decide to start a blog. Which is just as well, because special occasions are really just ordinary days when we decide to be the stars of our own little soap operas. We dress up, we put on a happy face, we exude warmth, even if we feel like wearing our pajamas, snarling at any other life forms, and poking them in the eye if they try to talk to us.
Weddings are a good example of how we produce little soap operas to celebrate "big days" in our lives. The bride has to wear the most uncomfortable dress she will ever wear in her lifetime. The groom will never let on that he'd rather eat ground glass than hug every guest. The whole damned dysfunctional family will line up for photographs which show them as loving, beautiful people. More money will be spent than anyone can afford.
So we pretend to be beautiful, stylish, loving, wealthy people for one day. Trust me, you will never again in your marriage feel all four of those things in one day. Reality always gives us a pimple on our nose, more bills than we can pay, and niggling little differences that keep our relationships slightly out of balance no matter how much love we feel.
Even funerals become productions. Through our grief, we want to send our loved one off to the grave with panache. Armloads of beautiful flowers they can't smell, clothes they wouldn't have been caught dead in ... oops, well, you know what I mean. And sometimes, we have a little party after the funeral, where all the "guests" eat, drink and try not to be overly merry. And, again, we pretend we're rich by spending a ludicrous amount of money on a casket, a plot of ground in the cemetery and a gravestone nobody will ever visit.
But ordinary days string together to make a life. They are not all good, not all bad, and rarely do they require a white dress with veil. We are ourselves on ordinary days. We smile, we laugh, we like to look nice, those are not bad things. But we also cry, yell, ignore one another, wear questionable clothing, hang up on telemarketers and eat cold pizza for breakfast. And we choose to spend our time with those we enjoy being around, we spend our money on things we need like food and books, and we wear clothes straight out of our own closets.
Evidently, most people enjoy those special days, because weddings are still being thrown and we still gather 'round to see our loved ones off to the next world. But luckily those days are rare and ordinary days far outnumber special days. We need ordinary days to find out who we really are and where we're really going. Ordinary days are also the days when we wash our clothes, put gas in the car and earn a living.
So today is just another ordinary day when I decided to start a blog and who knows, probably no one will even notice. If you have noticed, and you're reading my blog, thank you. If you don't like it, go away. I say that lovingly -- don't read things you don't enjoy, that's just a waste of time. If you like this blog, I'll try to provide more of the same. And I hope you'll be back to share an ordinary day with me.
Weddings are a good example of how we produce little soap operas to celebrate "big days" in our lives. The bride has to wear the most uncomfortable dress she will ever wear in her lifetime. The groom will never let on that he'd rather eat ground glass than hug every guest. The whole damned dysfunctional family will line up for photographs which show them as loving, beautiful people. More money will be spent than anyone can afford.
So we pretend to be beautiful, stylish, loving, wealthy people for one day. Trust me, you will never again in your marriage feel all four of those things in one day. Reality always gives us a pimple on our nose, more bills than we can pay, and niggling little differences that keep our relationships slightly out of balance no matter how much love we feel.
Even funerals become productions. Through our grief, we want to send our loved one off to the grave with panache. Armloads of beautiful flowers they can't smell, clothes they wouldn't have been caught dead in ... oops, well, you know what I mean. And sometimes, we have a little party after the funeral, where all the "guests" eat, drink and try not to be overly merry. And, again, we pretend we're rich by spending a ludicrous amount of money on a casket, a plot of ground in the cemetery and a gravestone nobody will ever visit.
But ordinary days string together to make a life. They are not all good, not all bad, and rarely do they require a white dress with veil. We are ourselves on ordinary days. We smile, we laugh, we like to look nice, those are not bad things. But we also cry, yell, ignore one another, wear questionable clothing, hang up on telemarketers and eat cold pizza for breakfast. And we choose to spend our time with those we enjoy being around, we spend our money on things we need like food and books, and we wear clothes straight out of our own closets.
Evidently, most people enjoy those special days, because weddings are still being thrown and we still gather 'round to see our loved ones off to the next world. But luckily those days are rare and ordinary days far outnumber special days. We need ordinary days to find out who we really are and where we're really going. Ordinary days are also the days when we wash our clothes, put gas in the car and earn a living.
So today is just another ordinary day when I decided to start a blog and who knows, probably no one will even notice. If you have noticed, and you're reading my blog, thank you. If you don't like it, go away. I say that lovingly -- don't read things you don't enjoy, that's just a waste of time. If you like this blog, I'll try to provide more of the same. And I hope you'll be back to share an ordinary day with me.
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