I was out to lunch when someone mentioned how the pace of her book club was making her forget what she had read.
She said, “I vividly remember books I read in high school and college just fine but I don’t remember book club books from just a few months ago!”
I said, always trying to be helpful, “That’s because book clubs are an abomination.”
“Hey,” she said. “I really love my book club. You suck.”
Who invented book clubs anyway?
I did wonder about that but in the end the answer doesn’t matter. Book clubs are here to stay and people (think) they like ‘em. And, isn’t liking something what life generally and reading specifically is all about? Could be, but there’s something else going on here. All of us have easy access to way more books than we can ever read. That’s not always been true, of course. Back to lunch. Before being canceled on charges of anti-book club heresy I tried to stimulate a moment of deeper thought when I asked, “How many books would you guess Shakespeare read over the course of his 52 years?”
Dozens, possibly hundreds but unlikely thousands as so many of today’s avid readers consume. Yes, I said consume as humans consume food as part of an endless cycle of food in / waste out. Imagine a food that continues to nourish over weeks, days and years. In reading, those are books remembered, returned to, quoted and treasured. Book club books are destined to be forgotten, like an unsubstantial meal that provides little if any sustaining nourishment.
The same effect, also driven by increasing ubiquity, also happens with music. Casual listening drove omnipresent music first into elevators and now Spotify. Now, think about the last series you binge-watched, unable to be sated, uninterested in waiting, until next week before devouring the next episode. Have you ever started what looks like an interesting series only to realize somewhere during the first episode that you’ve already watched the series from beginning to end? For all of this to work, an endless stream of media has to exist and it does. So, we consume more but with less and less genuine respect for what is being created.
Reading and listening; are they the same?
Of late, a book reviewer at the New York Times wrote a piece telling the world she’d come to fully embrace audio books over actual reading. I could not fight my way through the entire article. When she went so far as to contend that listening to a book was the same as reading I had to close the virtual pages of the newspaper I was reading. Can you imagine being a teacher of first or second grade students, trying to teach your students to read. Then, imagine an indignant parent scolding you for requiring students to learn to read when even reviewers at the New York Times prefer listening to reading. Why should my child bother to learn to read?
By the next morning it struck me that the reviewer was actually minimizing both reading and listening by unwisely equating each. Do I actually have to say that reading and listening are two different processes? The reviewer went on to sing the praises of audio books because she could listen while she knitted, crocheted, wove baskets or whatever. Full disclosure, I’ve done the same except I’m doing something truly constructive. Namely, practicing my tennis serve. Still, I am not reading while hitting my out-wide slice. I am listening and listening is an active and rewarding process.
We can dig a bit deeper by thinking about music. We nearly always listen to music but some cognoscenti read the musical score while listening which might give insight as to the performer’s fidelity to what’s been notated onto the score. That kind of listening is quite intense and so is also uncommon. Listeners to audiobooks may like or dislike the narrator’s voice. But hearing the narrator’s interpretation doesn’t bring anyone closer to a genuine — and certainly not a dispositive — understanding of what the author meant.
As an aside, I just finished an audio book called Meet Me at the Museum by Anne Youngson. It’s an unusual novel. The entire book consists of letters sent back and forth between a woman and a man. What’s interesting? Well, I think whatever quality exists in this book is primarily conveyed by the female and male readers, one an English woman and the other a Danish man writing in English (or someone doing a fair impression of a Dane speaking English). The point here is only that interpretation is an art, whether it is the interpretation of words on a page or musical notes on a score.
My hope is that we will all read and listen and watch with greater care and deliberation. Sensitize your own preferences when it comes to the media you consume. Look within rather than relentlessly asking others to recommend books or music. I think part of what makes art memorable is, sometimes, the effort we put into finding it. And, importantly, once you find something, read it again as you would play a song you have come to love, again and again. Read some of the dialog and narrative descriptions out loud. For just a few minutes, you be the narrator. Seek to treasure what you consume and it will nourish you now and tomorrow. Put another way, read less and you may find that you enjoy reading more in addition to remembering more of what you read. No, you don’t have to quit your book club but you might be a better reader if you do.
Paul Cervantes 