This week’s facilitation of Good Reads has really opened up the topic of reading choices, habits, and their impacts on literacy. Literacy is something often thought of in a black/white, 1/0 context. It’s a more nuanced grayscale, however, and can be used to describe the difference between someone who is an avid read and someone who is perfectly capable of reading but chooses not to. I’ve been both.
Through this article, I’ve stumbled upon Guys Read and Boys Read. These are organizations dedicated to, in no small part through their Internet presence, change the reality of male readership in the United States. Boys are less likely than girls to read, that’s well known. I’ve often thought that some people are just okay with that, accepting a false rule that males aren’t as inclined to be readers at a young age. This is definitely a black/white view and such thinking undoubtedly lets some who could be readers fall through the cracks.
I spent my years pre-16 in an odd relationship with books. Even though my reading had always been at a level beyond that of my peers, I'd done a poor job of engaging with reading. Being that most of my reading came from school assignments, I resisted. Even when it was for a book that I had been given latitude in choosing, I had a resentment for the proscribed interpretations that so many teachers would drill into us. It still happens that teachers in high school and university frequently prescribe interpretations, but only those poor at their job chafe when the student comes to a different conclusion.
For me, the crucial moment was when I spent several weeks in the hospital while my mother underwent numerous surgeries. I spent hours awaiting the results with my sisters or hours waiting for my mother to wake up. Reading a book to pass the time just matched that moment. I was already very introspective as a teenager facing the mortality of a parent, and having something as introspective as reading clicked for me, providing an appropriately contemplative outlet while letting me engage with such a worldview-altering experience.
Coming out of that time, I understood that books could be an intensely personal thing, even if assigned. That opened up a block I had in engaging with books, a block I now marvel at today. Now I'm a frequent reader, at least by the standards of my adolescence. I enjoy reading like few other things in this world and can be extremely picky about my reading. I can count at least a few books I gave the benefit of the doubt only to later abandon, sometimes even ludicrously close to the conclusion, because the author went of the deep end. Otherwise, I’m now about as devoted a reader as they come. For me, this was a product of external motivators stripping away my own misunderstanding. I, too, existed on the gray scale. Illiterate of course didn’t describe me, but perhaps I was underliterate. I wasn’t reading to my ability or desire, much like someone can be underemployed. Thankfully that has changed.
I really want to thank Mike for bringing Good Reads to our attention. Just like the site was designed to, it created a great conversation around reading, and not just books themselves. Aside from a few dear exceptions we all hold, books aren’t just about the stories or their specific effects on us – surely we could get that on TV or from movies if that was all we wanted. We read because doing so adds something to our world, and that something is different (and maybe similar) for each of us. Being reminded of the value that relationship has for us also reminds of the value it may not, but could have for others.
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