"Channel surfing is what you do when there is nothing on TV.
Reading is what you do when the TV is broken."
- The Grumpy Monkey
They said it would never happen. Eventually, they said it could never happen. Years of prodding and encouragement couldn't make it happen. Incentives and punishment couldn't make it happen. Eventually everyone gave up and stopped caring if it happened. Then somewhere, somehow, somewhen and for no apparent reason other than perhaps a sign of the Apocalypse, it happened.
The Grumpy Monkey became a reader.
(silence)
Of books.
(startled gasps)
Without pictures.
(mass hysteria)
It's true. I've actually read 42 books so far this year. 42! That number could possibly exceed the number I've read throughout the rest of my 29 years combined. From classics I was supposed to read in high school, like The Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22 (both great books, although I think I read Catcher too late in life as through the entire novel I wished I could just slap the shit out of Holden Caulfield), to the latest Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol (ehh...disappointing). There were even a few history books in there (A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz was fantastic).
The "Literature" category in Trivial Pursuit was always my weakness. My older sister would always count on that when I was beating her (one time she got burned because I happened to be reading the book in question at the time). Because of that, she gave me a quizzical look one day while I was reading and asked, "When the hell did you become a reader?" I had no answer other than a dumbfounded look. She seems to think it stems from a lack of intellectual stimulation in my life at present, which could be part of it. I found another answer, while I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (yes, I can actually make references to books now, too). In one scene, Dorian Gray, who has become a hedonist since realizing that any any sin or ignoble act he commits will be reflected on his portrait rather than himself, does something relatively nice in letting down a woman gently rather than breaking her heart. He later asks himself whether he did it because he was beginning to see the error in his ways, or for a much simpler reason: vanity. I think the same holds true for my sudden interest in literature. In the beginning, I think it was an attempt at looking smart. Here's the thing, though: I found that I liked it. So what if I started in the name of vanity? I found out what I had been missing all those years.
For years, I could never appreciate the value of the novel. If I was to read, I wanted to get something useful, some knowledge, out of it. This in itself, and being a history major (and so only reading history books), was, I think, why I never read. I mean, seriously, have you ever read a history book? Most of them are so boring, and my desire to retain every detail (rather than just the important ones) would usually get me through Chapter 1 before the book became a doorstop. I never realized that the novel could be educational and useful.
So, my apologies go out to all my teachers. And my parents. And everyone else who I frustrated with the hindrance to my education that a lack of interest in reading caused. You all were right, I was wrong. Maybe if I had read the books for the book reports in school (instead of, one time, doing a book report of a friends book report that he did of the back cover of a book. Still got a B+, though), I wouldn't be sitting here writing a blog that nobody reads. Or at least nobody will admit they read, for which I cannot blame them.
But for now I can take solace that, at long last, I can sit down and read a book and get all the way through it.
And then I can use it as a doorstop.
Reading is what you do when the TV is broken."
- The Grumpy Monkey
They said it would never happen. Eventually, they said it could never happen. Years of prodding and encouragement couldn't make it happen. Incentives and punishment couldn't make it happen. Eventually everyone gave up and stopped caring if it happened. Then somewhere, somehow, somewhen and for no apparent reason other than perhaps a sign of the Apocalypse, it happened.
The Grumpy Monkey became a reader.
(silence)
Of books.
(startled gasps)
Without pictures.
(mass hysteria)
It's true. I've actually read 42 books so far this year. 42! That number could possibly exceed the number I've read throughout the rest of my 29 years combined. From classics I was supposed to read in high school, like The Catcher in the Rye and Catch-22 (both great books, although I think I read Catcher too late in life as through the entire novel I wished I could just slap the shit out of Holden Caulfield), to the latest Dan Brown novel, The Lost Symbol (ehh...disappointing). There were even a few history books in there (A Voyage Long and Strange by Tony Horwitz was fantastic).
The "Literature" category in Trivial Pursuit was always my weakness. My older sister would always count on that when I was beating her (one time she got burned because I happened to be reading the book in question at the time). Because of that, she gave me a quizzical look one day while I was reading and asked, "When the hell did you become a reader?" I had no answer other than a dumbfounded look. She seems to think it stems from a lack of intellectual stimulation in my life at present, which could be part of it. I found another answer, while I was reading The Picture of Dorian Gray, by Oscar Wilde (yes, I can actually make references to books now, too). In one scene, Dorian Gray, who has become a hedonist since realizing that any any sin or ignoble act he commits will be reflected on his portrait rather than himself, does something relatively nice in letting down a woman gently rather than breaking her heart. He later asks himself whether he did it because he was beginning to see the error in his ways, or for a much simpler reason: vanity. I think the same holds true for my sudden interest in literature. In the beginning, I think it was an attempt at looking smart. Here's the thing, though: I found that I liked it. So what if I started in the name of vanity? I found out what I had been missing all those years.
For years, I could never appreciate the value of the novel. If I was to read, I wanted to get something useful, some knowledge, out of it. This in itself, and being a history major (and so only reading history books), was, I think, why I never read. I mean, seriously, have you ever read a history book? Most of them are so boring, and my desire to retain every detail (rather than just the important ones) would usually get me through Chapter 1 before the book became a doorstop. I never realized that the novel could be educational and useful.
So, my apologies go out to all my teachers. And my parents. And everyone else who I frustrated with the hindrance to my education that a lack of interest in reading caused. You all were right, I was wrong. Maybe if I had read the books for the book reports in school (instead of, one time, doing a book report of a friends book report that he did of the back cover of a book. Still got a B+, though), I wouldn't be sitting here writing a blog that nobody reads. Or at least nobody will admit they read, for which I cannot blame them.
But for now I can take solace that, at long last, I can sit down and read a book and get all the way through it.
And then I can use it as a doorstop.
