Everyone grows out of things... for example, we moved on from the unfortunate fascinations we once had as children with side ponytails, boogers, and dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets and we developed more refined preferences as adults, hopefully. Unfortunately, we occasionally grow out of things which perhaps would have served us well to remain permanently in out array of habits.
When I was a kid, I read feverishly. I ate books for breakfast, and I actually enjoyed them... more then I enjoyed real breakfast, actually. Simply put, I could not get enough books in my mental belly, digesting them by the dozen. Though I was one of those punks who dragged my saint of a mother to Borders at midnight to pick up each and every Harry Potter, I also dabbled in some less cult-worthy teeny bopper literature, moved onto a French Realism-Romanticism phase, and then obsessed over post modernism for a while... this of course all happened back in the day, you know, when I knew how to read and all...
Theories abound as to why reading has fallen off my list of things to do, but bottom line: it just has. I know I don't stand alone, people just don't seem to want to read, or write. We type lyk dis cuz it e-z, ryt? Am I the only one who wonders if we keep typing like that, maybe we'll forget how to write? If we stop reading, then won't we forget how to read? Call me dramatic, but I honestly feel significantly less intelligent recently, and I attribute it to my increase in activities that involve ZERO reading. I can guarantee there are about three dozen grammar and spelling errors in this single blog post, and no, not just because I have the typing skills of a primate.
What is it we're lacking? Better language, or better themes? Are books too boring cause VH1 has trained us to think a night without Rock of Love-worthy brawls is lame? Maybe we need to outgrow the correct things, maybe the visual language of pop culture [I love pop culture, don't get me wrong] isn't the only one we should be speaking. New York Times best sellers are wonderful and all, but if you print out a list of classic literature, how many novels have you read on there?
...And how many of those weren't required for fifth period English lit?
In Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury described a society in which firefighters created fires instead of putting them out to destroy books so society could not read them... seems like we might be doing them a favor by beating them to it.
I might considering reading, if what I were reading was this. I gotta buy it, I just gotta.
I don't think there are words in this books, but there are some SICK shoes. And a pretty crazy picture of this woman's ass, but I mean what can you do?
Do you ever read any of the books you burn?
-Ray Bradbury
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