Books and stupidity

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.