WDWRF 11 - Anna Quindlen - The Activity of Reading

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[@mudgetheexpendable]

The act of reading is the celebratory superlative of solitude. Loved your review, and that read. Feeling seen is always a good feeling.

[@LeafbyLeaf]

I love that! "The act of reading is the celebratory superlative of solitude." Wow. A beautiful sentence and statement.

[@mudgetheexpendable]

@@LeafbyLeaf you're welcome to use it as you see fit...it makes my felings about reading crystal-clear.

[@Pretzels722]

This makes me think of Borges’ beginning of Library of Babel. The narrator says something along the lines of “like many intense readers, as a young man I travelled everywhere”

[@LeafbyLeaf]

And Emily Dickinson: “To travel far, there is no better ship than a book.”

[@sventhemoose1218]

I am the same way - get easily distracted by noise and movement around me, and if I try to read, I'm finding out that I just went through a whole page and I have no idea what I read. When I'm in public places, like airports and flights - I use a good noise cancelling headset to listen to audio books, and that actually works. As to why we're reading - I can say that since I learned how to read in first grade, I never stopped reading. You made me think - what is the common thread between my 6-year old self and who I am now, 50 years later. I would say - Imagination. Books stir my imagination in a way that no other activity does, and I have to admit that I am somewhat addicted to it.

[@LeafbyLeaf]

Yes, yes, yes: imagination. This is lovely. It's the same for me. That common thread of imaginative possibility. I can't get enough!

[@babettedejong2975]

I've been mulling this aspect of reading over as well, ever since a therapist remarked to me years ago that reading is escapism and thus was not conducive to my well-being at that time (diagnosed with burnout). I was too taken aback by that remark to reply in the moment; it actually confused the hell out of me for a while. Never crossed my mind people COULD read for escapism, haha. But I couldn't yet see what I did get out of it. And later I realised that reading is the opposite of escapism for me, it is like meditation or mindfulness. I see the same qualities in all three 'activities'. You take a moment to sit with yourself without distraction to enter an internal space of grounded quietness in which you gently balance observation of and immersion into yourself as well something as 'external'. For example, in mindfulness, meditation or reading, that would be a sensation, a prompt or mantra, or an idea, respectively. This gentle balance between observation and experience creates a sort of... distanced and more total view or understanding, both of myself and whatever I (mentally) engage with, a sense of clarity is cultivated. When I read at the right speed a kind of flow emerges, similar in qualities to mindfulness or meditation in my experience, in the sense that it allows for a natural and intuitive flow between perception, experience, interpretation and association. It brings a gentle attention and awareness to all kinds of parts of my being. It reveals myself to myself (as you beautifully mentioned in previous episodes) and that settles me, quiets me. edited for typos

[@jdfromparis6230]

Very well put. I didn't comment on the mindfulness involved with reading, but it definitely crossed my mind as I watched the video. As a fellow burnt-out person, I wish you feel better and took good care of yourself.

[@dorothysatterfield3699]

My older sister was an insatiable reader all through her too-short life. She never forgot or forgave the elementary-school teacher who said to our mother, "Susan reads too much." She said reading was a form of escapism, and too much of that sort of thing was bad for a child. It would encourage them to live in a fantasy world. This, from a teacher! That gave my mother, who believed in getting on with the practical business of day-to-day living (especially when it came to girls) and who was proud to say she'd never read a book in her life, the ammo she needed. She now had expert opinion to back her up, and she used it whenever she caught my sister reading instead of doing her chores or her homework. That "teacher" should have been fired. I hope you fired your therapist.

[@Bob-kt6bi]

I liked the transparency and candid style of relating this back to your own reading experiences, thanks for the vid

[@LeafbyLeaf]

Really appreciate the feedback. This series has been revelatory and invigorating. Thank you!

[@caivail4614]

I love this, thank you for sharing these earnest and considered thoughts. I think I read not to still or silence my mind, but to live lives that I could not otherwise. I would love to have traveled the world and experienced wild adventures and been more extroverted, but that wasn’t the hand I was dealt. However, I can be an introverted, crippled homebody and travel the world, time travel, and shapeshift into countless forms as a reader. It’s magic.

[@LeafbyLeaf]

Indeed, indeed! I quote Emily Dickinson again: “To travel far, there is no better ship than a book.”

[@jdfromparis6230]

I can't speak for the way people who read are treated in the US, but in France it seems that they are treated with much more respect (if not admiration) than what Quindlen describes. Here, reading, especially what's considered "high literature" and classics is highly encouraged. No matter your social class you will often find a fairly large bookcase in people's homes even though as is the case anywhere, a lot of people read a lot of mediocre books. Yet, even reading terrible books is considered preferable to not reading at all here. In September and now in January we have what is called : La rentrée littéraire, which is when most of the books are published and in September over 450 novels are published alone. Then you have the literary prize season. It's discussed on TV, on the radio, etc. Winners are invited on talk shows and celebrated. The figure of the writer is revered. Another funny thing about France. No one here ever reads the classics. No one. However, we reread them. "What did you do last summer?" "Oh, I reread Proust, Balzac, Stendhal, Hugo..." Note that we also don't reread books either, but seemingly the complete works of our greatest authors... We have to put all these vacation days to good use after all, and it's understood that in order to be considered learned you already have read everything worth reading. Extra points if you read in a foreign language as well, and bonus for reading rare languages or unknown authors. In the political realm, many of us (me included) lament the fact that fewer and fewer of our top politicians are well read. No matter what you think of them or their policies, presidents like Pompidou, Mitterrand, or even Chirac were very well read and cultured (yes, even Chirac who did everything he could to hide it. Someone said he was the kind of person who would read the famous poet St John Perse hiding the book behind a copy of Playboy). Not to mention that it is mandatory, during the last year of high school to study philosophy. There are different sections in HS where you can chose to study more science, or more humanities, etc, but everyone has to take a philosophy class. I had to take 9 hours of philosophy per week at the time. On top of the literature classes and everything else. All of this might contribute to the way readers are treated in different countries or culture. It's just sad that watching 5 hours of Netflix a day is considered normal, but reading for one hour, no matter what you read, will get you labeled as an ugly duckling...

[@dorothysatterfield3699]

How I envy you. There's always been a strong streak of anti-intellectualism in the US, and it's getting worse all the time.

[@jdfromparis6230]

@@dorothysatterfield3699 This anti-intellectualism is getting here too, and it's not pretty. I read your other comment about your sister who loved books. It broke my heart. What was that teacher thinking? How is this even possible? Here the child would be praised for reading, and encouraged, at least by the teachers if no one else. Actually, don't know if this still happens, but when I was a child in the 80s in elementary school, we would all get a book as a gift at the end of the school year and the teacher would choose them so the subject would appeal to each child specifically. That way, even children who's parents didn't have much money would get a little personal library after a few years in elementary. I'm sure your sister would have loved this.

[@gabrielseanwallace3979]

Perhaps the very fact that the activity of reading necessarily excludes itself from the 'metrics-obsessed culture' is also the very reason that we turn to it for, as Michael Silverblatt put it, a worded silence. I think a lot of people are so exhausted by the artificial quantification of everything in society, and reading offers one of the only experiences of purely qualitative value we can turn to for escape. It's like a breath of air unpolluted by rankings or ratings. It's the primary reason I've never graded a book under any star-system or otherwise-I want to preserve an experience of words, without converting those words into a numerical value. I believe Dave Eggers spoke a little about this in his Bookworm interview upon the launch of his novel 'The Every'.

[@LeafbyLeaf]

This resonates with me precisely. In fact--I can't remember if I said it in this video or not, but I was deliberately trying not to echo Silverblatt's expression of the "worded silence" because I had been tending to overuse it in videos. But it really is the perfect expression. So I'm thrilled that you invoked it!

[@MaximTendu]

Books afford us silence and solitude. I live in an overcrowded, cacophonic city in Southeast Asia, so reading is literally (literarily?) saving my life- or, at least, my mental health :)

[@LeafbyLeaf]

Yes, they are indeed portals into this space that a lot of us need to maintain sanity! (Even if you have to sometimes wear noise-cancelling headphone, like I do, even at home.)

[@Librarypencils]

I watched this twice. The obvious is not obvious because it remains hidden, just under the surface, constantly revealing angles and further dimensions like mountain.

[@LeafbyLeaf]

Very poetic!

[@jdfromparis6230]

Kudos on your pronunciation of Roger Grenier :-) I think silence exists in different flavors. Silence at home can be conducive to a good reading experience or a good night sleep. So is the soundscape of an empty sea shore that is not complete silence, as the surf comes and goes, but is so rhythmically close to our own biology that we vibrate in harmony with it without even noticing. I consider this silence, as it is peaceful and natural and timeless. Same goes for the sounds of the forest, of the wind, of the rain. But as we near the sounds of cities and men, silence becomes even more relative. I can read on the metro, or on a train, as there too is rhythm to my environment while the rest doesn't particularly call for my attention. Oddly enough, the worst kind of silence for me is the one you find in Libraries, when everything is hush hush and everyone is on edge, horrified at the idea of dropping a pencil, and thus, ironically, where the sound of a page softly turned is enough to distract me from my reading.

[@LeafbyLeaf]

I had a great coach for that pronunciation! :) Wow--I really like this unfortunate irony of the public library's "police state" feel that you've brought up. I hadn't thought of that, mostly because, like I said in the video, I don't read in public spaces. But because of cultural osmosis, I understand the fact you're introducing here. Now, as for certain noises being so rhythmic and natural that they become conducive to a kind of silence: I also grasp and like this enhancement of the conversation. When I travel to places where I don't know the language (Belgium, Germany, Sweden, Israel, etc.), I find that I can read in public spaces where people are talking because I don't seize on every topic around me and try to follow it like I do for languages I do understand! In fact, the din of foreign tongues undulating around me while I read can be quite enjoyable!

[@jdfromparis6230]

Hey Chris, I love the Dying Grass in the background... Always great to start the weekend with one of your videos.

[@LeafbyLeaf]

As someone on Goodreads recently said about the appearance of _Against the Day_ in the background: "The LeafXLeaf background book table is the ultimate prognosticator!"

[@somadood]

gm

[@LeafbyLeaf]

☕️☕️☕️

[@bluewordsme2]

beautiful.....left you a msg on ig...lovely video once again

[@LeafbyLeaf]

🙏