I love it when people ask me the oh-so-innocent question of "do you enjoy reading?" as the first thing to cross my mind is a series of sarcastic and entirely condescending remarks. Well...yes. To keep it simple.
Reading offers so much to the mind, such as languages offer the desire to express, or colors add to the ability to paint. In fact, when I imagine someone replying with a sober 'not really' it might build a well of darkness in my gullet as if being robbed of the moment.
So hard to think of a life in the absence of so much inspiration, such an exercise of imagination, I only see the noncognitive drought which only times of abundance make clear. Yet I now know it is hard not to see it as a weakness, but what is the alternative?
Films simply ask you to visualize a situation, a breakfast plate for example, specific in every way. A talented writer will describe that breakfast while making you imagine the details for your self, and the brain define the contours of every spoon for itself.
The bits we read on the internet barely hold the attention, and seem to encourage quick tangential searches. No, give me a good old fashioned poet to describe a mood, as Frost, Yeats, Fenton, or Wilde did on a daily basis. Let me learn with the works of any scholar, contemporary or ancient, and linger on every word which no documentary can afford. I can dive into the polemical, disect the history, and feast on the fantastical science fictions.
No, reading is not dead, and I do not feel I am being old fashioned in this, although time will tell. I feel we can all add the slightest pressures in society by encouraging our family and friends to pick up a good book, spend an hour in the couch, grass, or bed, and find something to expand our minds. Perhaps that hour might just inspire us into our next dream, which might lead to a lifelong fulfillment.
Yes. I like reading.
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