IS anyone out there still reading books?
The realization hit me a while ago as I was looking at the array of books I have accumulated over time. I realized that in my late 60s, I can never finish reading them all. So many books, so little time.
I have a confession. I am an addict. A book addict. A printed book addict. “Read in order to live,” advised the French writer Gustave Flaubert. Au contraire, Monsieur: I live in order to read.
The trouble with me is that I never stopped wanting to learn after graduation. I describe myself as a prodigious, promiscuous, voracious, omnivorous, compulsive, obsessive and impulsive devourer of knowledge.
Hungry for knowledge, I looked for it in books. Words spoke to me, gave up their secrets and so whole universes opened. I became irrevocably a reader of books.
Since then, I have built a fire-hazardous and termite-attracting library in my house, overflowing with books of any subject.
Maybe a wealthy home will have a huge library of books like mine, but I have the satisfaction of knowing that I got the same collection at one-third of the cost. I bought most of these books at bargain prices. I have scavenged in all the city’s bargain bookshops as far as my legs would take me.
If one’s personal library is a reflection of he or she is, then my eclectic collection will probably confuse the personality diagnostician. I am not selective when it comes to books. Astronomy, art history, science of sleep, rock music history, biographies, espionage, reincarnation, esoteric theology, name it—there’s no subject that doesn’t interest me. I agree with Gilbert K. Chesterton, English author and mystery novelist, when he quipped: “There is no such thing on Earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.”
Lately, I have been bingeing on biographies of famous writers, politicians and Broadway musical composers, and I can’t get enough of them. I am also predisposed to nonfiction books. Would you believe I have a shelf filled with books on native Americans? I also have a sizable collection of books on the English race that would qualify me as an Anglophile. But that’s just a small sample.
The problem with so many books within your grasp is you don’t know what to read first. Right now, I am reading five books at the same time; I don’t mean real time simultaneously. I pick up one book and read a few chapters, and next time, I go pick another book and go through it for a while. When I get bored, I go back to the previous book or get another book. With so many subjects and topics to read, I never get bored. There’s always something interesting to learn.
Writer Kathleen Norris said exactly what I feel: “Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.”
Thomas à Kempis, the writer of Imitation of Christ, found joyful solace in book reading: “In all things I have sought rest, and nowhere have I found it save in a corner with a book.”
But here is a caveat. Because you tend to become a voracious devourer of books, you tend to shut out the rest of the family. My wife rolls up her eyes when she sees me carrying a book first thing when I wake up in the morning or from a nap. She knows it’s a signal for me not to be disturbed or to be engaged in serious conversation. I would be lost to my books for a while.
Is there a future for a book junkie like me in the electronic age? Good question.
Come to think of it, have you ever encountered a boy or girl reading a book nowadays? I recall the time I once proudly showed my book collection to my own grandkids, and they just stared at the books nonchalantly, giving me their most blasé “so what?” look. Then they turned away to pick up their electronic gadgets or smartphones to fiddle with all day long.
I am not totally knocking down electronic gadgets. In fact, I have a collection of books on my Kindle and e-Book. But apart from straining my eyesight, the electronic books do not engage me as much as printed books. As they say in the vernacular: Basta iba!
In his book The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate Reading in an Electronic Age, self-proclaimed bibliophile and literary critic Sven Birkerts asserted, “Words read from a screen or written onto a screen…have a different status and affect us differently from words held immobile on the accessible space of a page.”
As they say in the vernacular: Basta iba, e!
Thanks to my book collecting, I have been immunized against the electronic age. My passion for reading books has not waned. Every book I bring home renews my passion for books. Reading a printed book is a deliciously indulgent act of protest for all those who treasure the joys of the printed word in this electronic, digital age.
I am consoled by what Groucho Marx once said referring to the electronic entertainment: “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
Besides, I am not electronic-gadget savvy. As a print guy, I think that books, newspapers and magazines are the ultimate portable media. I always bring a pocketbook or magazine with me when I know that there would be periods of waiting in my next appointment. For example, if I bring my wife to the doctor, I know I will wait for hours. Or I pick her up from a gathering of friends, I make sure I am there before the agreed pickup time and I park the car and open a book or magazine, which I never forget to bring. As long as I have a book or magazine to read, I don’t mind waiting forever.
To my fellow senior citizens who have plenty of time to spare, now is the time to take up book reading. It does not involve much physical effort—nothing that will put pressure on your knees or strain your heart. All you need are good reading glasses.
Without getting up from your rocking chair, you get to meet lots of great people. As one professor said, “You can at any moment converse with Socrates or Shakespeare or Carlyle or Dumas or Dickens or Shaw or Barrie or Galsworthy.” Or Jose Rizal, Marcelo del Pilar, Renato Constantino, Nick Joaquin, Horacio de la Costa and other greats.
There is nothing more pleasurable than the power of the text to immerse us, enchant us, surprise us and teach us. What you get from books can be so uplifting, transporting and enriching.
And take note. Reading also helps jog the mind, which effectively shoos away dementia or Alzheimer’s disease and tells it to come another day.
So if you have been reading this far, congratulations. Let’s keep the light shining on the printed text before it’s finally and totally dimmed by the digital age.