Why Do YOU Read?

Barnes & Noble recently came out with a short video called Why I Read, in which they record interviews with L.A. readers and edit the responses together into a nice little YouTube style production.

I love this idea of mixing medias. But I love even more the idea of going out and asking people about books and reading. Good lord, I do this as often as I can, and sometimes feel a little like an oddity when I do. But the fact is that I'm always wondering what people are reading. I love asking my friends what they're reading, that question is my favorite conversation starter at parties, and whenever I see someone reading in a park or at a bus stop I have to slow down and try to catch a glimpse of the title. On a recent trip to Boston I nearly gave myself whiplash walking through the Public Gardens. (Boston is a city of readers, and the Gardens were full of people with books.) I applaud Barnes & Noble for taking literary questions out into the public space, making books less of an oddity and more mainstream.

As for the question itself, "why do you read?", I'm not sure that would be such an easy question for me to answer. The dramatic answer is that I read because I must. I can't remember a time when I didn't read, and can't imagine life without it. The more tame answer is that reading enriches my life and educates me. The person I am today is an amalgam of all the characters I have read over the years, incorporating the traits I found admirable and being wary of the traits I found distasteful.

(The best answer to this question, given by Robin Williams in Dead Poet's Society, and more recently by my friend Mark Merenda, is "we read to woo women!")

So now I ask, why do YOU read?

Rediscovering the Classics

Rediscovering the Classics is a class initially started for parents of school-age or home-schooled children, who wanted to rediscover literature (or a love for literature) in order to better pass that love and knowledge onto their own kids. However, the class has become a wonderful group of any and all adults, with or without children (some have grandchildren) who are interested in rediscovering some of the wonderful classics they may have missed in school, or that they wish to read again with fresh eyes.

The Literature class will be meeting 2 Friday nights a month (generally the 2nd and 4th Fridays, although that may not be strictly so every month. If you want to participate in the class, but this schedule absolutely doesn't work for you, please let me know). Our first Rediscovering Literature meeting will be on Friday, September 5th, at which time I will be handing out a solidified schedule and syllabus, and we'll have our first book assignment!

I promise I won't be assigning any War and Peace length novels, so slow readers please don't be intimidated!

There is a small materials fee for this class, which is $20, and you are responsible for purchasing or borrowing your own books (I will arrange with bookstores to have the book in stock.) Class size is limited to 8-16 people, so please let me know as soon as possible if you would like to participate. If you would like to pass this information on to others you think might be interested please feel free to do so! We welcome friends and newcomers alike!!

If you are interested please contact Jenni Buchanan at edana_bkwurm@yahoo.com.

George Orwell--Author, Journalist... Blogger?

Most of us know about George Orwell the writer; best known as the author of the novels Nineteen Eighty Four and Animal Farm, it comes as no surprise that Orwell was a journalist as well; but could a man who lived from June 1903 to January 1950 also be a blogger?

Indeed he can! Thanks to the creative minds at The Orwell Prize, we now have The Orwell Diaries--a website in which the journal entries of George Orwell from 1938 to 1942 will be published in blog form, each one exactly 70 years to the day after it was first written. The first entry is from August 9, 1938 and is posted on August 9, 2008.

I love the idea of having the journal entries of any of my favorite writers posted on a semi-daily basis in the imminently friendly and readable blog format! What a stroke of brilliance! And from what I know about Eric Arthur Blair (George Orwell was actually his pen name), he would feel this was exactly the right time to be publishing his words once more. With his keen insights into social inequalities and a strong opposition to authority of just about any kind, I wonder what Orwell would have thought and written about our current government administration.

The entries that have been posted thus far (there are only seven as of yet) focus mainly on Orwell's physical surroundings--the weather, the season, flora and fauna--but I'm hoping that as the diary grows so will the subject matter. This is, after all, the man who had so much to say about other writers in his literary criticism, as well as publishing the following rules for writers in his essay "Politics and the English Language":

• Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.


• Never use a long word where a short one will do.


• If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.


• Never use the passive voice where you can use the active.


• Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, jargon word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.


• Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbarous.

I'm looking forward to continued reading of Orwell's diaries. In my experience, Orwell had a keen mind, and a keener desire to change the world for the better. In fact, he doesn't seem to have been able to write much of anything without his political idealism and a passion for improvement slipping in somehow. In spite of his sometimes dark themes, it seems an act of eternal optimism to continue writing for change as he did. I admire him for that, and look forward to getting to know him a little bit better.