When I was working in the Reading Lab last semester, a student asked me a question that just broke my heart. "Are there really people out there who LOVE reading, and do it for fun?" It was the tone of her voice that did it; she wasn't angry or sarcastic, she just honestly couldn't conceive of a person who would do something like this for enjoyment. We had been getting along really well during our tutoring session, and she wanted to know, honestly, was this something that teachers just say to make you do your homework, or do these strange creatures actually exist in nature?
I was quick to explain that yes, these people did really exist; in fact, I was one of them. Despite the fact that reading in big chunks tends to give me migraines these days, I can't think of anything I would rather do with my spare time than sit down with a good book; heaven, to me, is a huge city library or a Borders, provided I have a nice, big gift certificate to spend when I get there. :) Confused, she asked what it was about reading that I liked so much. Here is my answer, in a nutshell.
First, you can't ever enjoy reading if you just read the stuff they give you in school. I'm an English teacher, so I can appreciate the beauty of Shakespeare as much as anyone, but you won't catch me picking up Hamlet for some light reading on the weekend! And frankly, a lot of it is just boring; you can get pretty much everything that happens in The Old Man and the Sea from the title (there's an old guy. On the ocean. Who catches a fish. Yippee.), and Holden Caulfield from Catcher in the Rye might be the voice of a generation to some, but to me, he always seemed like a whiny loser. The real stuff worth reading is the stuff that you WON'T (usually) get in school. Here are some of my personal favorites, and why they're so great.
First are memoirs. Do you like talk shows? How about reality TV? Well, this is the same thing, but better; you get a much more in-depth look at the life of a real person, and you get it from their point-of-view, so in a way, it's like getting to live that person's life for awhile. In memoirs, you can see what it feels like to be a soldier in Iraq,
If you're not the memoir type, maybe you'd prefer a genre fiction ( a type of made-up story tailored to a specific audience). Two genres that are almost always good are chick lit (for the ladies) and science fiction (traditionally for the guys, but I'm a girl and I love it, so if you ask me, it's for everyone). With chick lit, you've basically got your romantic comedy, but on paper. Two of the best, in my opinion, are
Bridget Jones' Diary, which is nothing like the movie, and Cassandra French's Finishing School for Boys, which is somewhat sick and twisted, but absolutely hysterical. Any girl who has had a crappy boyfriend should read it, preferably right after a break-up. In sci-fi, I will honestly read just about anything that involves the word "cyberpunk" or "alien planet" (as long as it does not also include "sex slaves" or something of that nature), but my favorites would have to be Snow Crash and A Canticle for Leibowitz (listed below). And if you start reading sci-fi and like it, that's the time to check out The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy - I have read it at least 10 times and it is still funny. But I will concede it's probably only funny if you read a lot of sci-fi. The appeal of both types of fiction is similar to the appeal of watching a movie. Why not just watch a movie? You can put SO MUCH MORE detail into a book that the movie can't even come close; plus, when you read, you can imagine the characters and the settings in your own way, which the directors and actors often screw up if they try to put it onscreen (think about it - you can describe a lot of things in words that we don't have special effects to do yet, or the money to put onscreen, or the producer might think it's "not commercial", or whatever dumb reason).
If none of this appeals to you, I would suggest two more things that often students don't consider to be reading, but they ABSOLUTELY ARE READING. First, magazines. Are you interested in movies and TV? Pick up an Entertainment Weekly. You like sports? Grab a Sports Illustrated. Fashion and guy advice? Glamour or Cosmo. Sure, they're not always the most sophisticated stuff (I swear, if I had a nickel for every time Cosmo's cover said they had sex advice I couldn't live without, I could retire already), but if there's words on a page and you're getting meaning out of them, that's READING. PERIOD. Once you've been doing that for awhile and are ready to move on, see me (or another friendly English teacher), tell me/him/her what magazine you read, and we can find you a great book just like it - promise.
The other type of "non-reading reading" is the graphic novel (manga), which is becoming a real art form now. There are new ones being published every day, in every genre imaginable - they are NOT just superheroes or little Japanese schoolgirls anymore. Some really good ones that I have read are Maus and Persepolis, and I have a ton more on my reading list that I haven't got to yet. Again, if it's got words, it's reading - you can always move on to something else later, if you want to. And if you find something that totally grabs you, you can always find a teacher or librarian (or use Amazon) to get another book on that topic. That's how most of us who love reading get hooked: we find one book, on one thing, that is so interesting that we have to read another about it. And then we read another. And another. Sometimes it's an author that grabs you, so you read everything he or she has written. Sometimes it's a subject, and you want to learn more about it. Sometimes it's a genre - you get into graphic novels and get interested in how art gets paired with story (and it's STILL reading if that's what interests you!) and you read more of them. But you keep trying new things until something works.
Finally, it is possible to love reading as an adult even if you HATED it as a kid. My brother hated reading - he was a slow reader, never did his assignments, and found them incredibly dull. I probably made it worse, because I read to him a lot, so he never really NEEDED to learn to read well - I did it for him until he was in about 5th grade. Anyway, he continued hating it until college. Then he took a college philosophy class and had to read a book by Khalil Gibran. And he LOVED it. He read all of this guy's books. Then he started reading more philosophy, and then the Beat writers, and then Buddhist stuff, and frankly, I don't understand half of the stuff on his shelf these days, but he loves it. My sister-in-law won't let him near a bookstore now because he spends too much money. None of us in the family EVER thought that would happen. :)
When the student left the reading lab, she promised she would try reading a few of the things I'd suggested. I hope I see her again this term so I can see how things turned out.
