Windows and Mirrors

After the movies yesterday, we all went to Powell’s bookstore on Hawthorne St. and wasn’t that a delight! I bought books for both grandkids, even more satisfying than buying them the ice cream they always expect from our visits, and got two more for myself. I now have four books on my bedside table I’m looking forward to reading and that makes a distinct difference in my day. Or more accurately, my night.

 

I believe I have had a book to read my entire life, probably beginning around 9 or 10 years old, and often several. Fiction, non-fiction and poetry side-by-side. The non-fiction took a steep rise after reading Joseph Campbell’s The Power of Myth back around 1988 and following his ideas out to the various books he had read and beyond. Since his extraordinary insights and eloquence and knowledge base came from reading some 9 hours a day for 5 years (similar to the amount of time Charlie Parker practiced his saxophone), it inspired me to aim for at least an hour a day for the rest of my life. Which I have done, perhaps more counting the Audible books I listen to while walking or in the car. 

 

And my house is testimony to this disciplined practice which is better described as an effortless pleasure. In our small apartment—and much to my wife’s chagrin— there are some 600 books spilling out of bookshelves in four different rooms. I love the library, but I still buy books and so it means that the periodically cleansing of taking books to the used book section of Green Apple Bookstore or the little Free Books structures on sidewalks throughout the city means there are many more that I have read over the years. 

 

This line of thought made me curious about the average American’s statistics and the results are pretty damn depressing. It appears that in 2023, 54% of Americans reported reading ONE book and 82% reported that they had read 10 or less. In 2021, 17% of adults said they had read no books at all. In the same survey, college graduates read 6 fewer books than in previous years. 42% reported that they read no books at all after graduation. 

 

The sobering statistics continue:

• 21% of adults in the U.S. are illiterate.

• 54% have a literacy below 6^th grade level.

• 65% of Americans have not read a book in the past year.

• 80% of US families did not buy a book in the last year. 

• 70% of Americans have not been in a bookstore in the past five years.

• 60% of US public school students do not read at grade level. 

• 50% of American adults do not read a book in a year. 

 

The source of this information is https://www.abtaba.com/blog/59-reading-statistics# and it continues with another list:

 

1.    Reading for just six minutes can reduce stress levels by 68%.

2.    Reading can increase empathy and emotional intelligence.

3.    Children who are read to at home have a higher success rate in school.

4.    Reading can improve sleep quality.

5.    Reading can increase vocabulary and improve writing skills.

6.    Reading can improve mental focus and concentration.

7.    Reading can reduce the risk of developing Alzheimer's disease.

 

It’s clear that this cost-effective, ultimate simple way to improve our national mental health, physical health, intelligence, capacity for empathy, capacity for critical thought essential to effective participation in a democracy, is quite literally at our fingertips. No further away that a local library or bookstore. 

 

My personal testimony is that reading can be a window out into a world we’ve yet to know, a way to travel far beyond our limited selves and come to know our larger selves through the simple act of imaginative participation in another story. A way to take an intellectual journey into ideas beyond the ones we think we know. An opportunity to make friendships with characters who bring us excitement and comradery. A way to choose between good and evil and wrong or right by deciding who to root for in the unfolding plots. A look at historical or psychological or cultural patterns that help explain how we got to be where we are and point the way forward to how we might be better. 

 

Or it can be a mirror revealing the hidden faces within ourselves we can’t see in the one in our bathroom. An astounding revelation seeing ourselves in another and comforting us with the knowledge that we are not alone. 

 

Imagine living in a windowless, mirrorless house where you see nothing but the furniture you’ve put there and the decorations you’ve hung on the wall. Day after day the same tired story, with no new input into a brain hungry to make new connections between axons and dendrites hanging useless in our grey matter. Day after day a heart that pumps out the same old feelings without a single opening to something more expansive or beautiful. Combine that with the statistic that 50% of Americans have not read a book in the last year and you just have to wonder if it’s the same 50% that could only read enough to mark a dot in the voting booth for an ignorant man and his cronies who will make their windowless house yet more toxic and poisonous to the soul. 

 

I’ll close with two of my favorite quotes about reading:

 

• A book is an axe for the frozen sea within us. —Franz Kafka

 

• Outside of a dog, a book is man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read.  —Groucho Marx