Hello fellow lovers of language!
Today begins the month of May, which is, incidentally, Get Caught Reading Month. Now, I know the Get Caught Reading program was designed to encourage K-12 students to read, but I contend that everyone, regardless of age, should make a point to read as much as possible. I admit that my position on this issue is somewhat biased. As a former librarian and current editor, books have long been a central part of my life. Libraries and bookstores are my happy places. Reading has always been my favorite hobby. I carry my Kindle with me everywhere I go. And yet it’s still so easy to get distracted with other activities and not read as much as I would like to, and probably not as much as I should.
Now, if you’re anything like me, you’ve got a list a mile long of books you’d like to read someday when you’ve got the time. Even being as blessed as I am to read as part of my job, I still cannot find enough hours to explore all the literary worlds I’d like to. There are classics I have still not read, ones I’m ashamed to admit I’ve made it this far in life without experiencing (Great Expectations and The Catcher in the Rye come to mind). I have yet to crack open John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars or Helen Oyeyemi’s Boy, Snow, Bird or any other great new book this year (except for those I’ve edited, of course). And every time I choose something else over reading, I’m cheating myself.
Because books teach us how to be human. Or, at least, the ones worth reading do. A book doesn’t have to be great literature to help us learn something about ourselves and our humanity; it just has to communicate its message to its reader. Books serve as our practice for the real world. They model examples of human interaction and show us how different approaches to all manner of scenarios can play out. They inform and even create our shared experience as people living on this planet. Why do we need to read books? Because they give meaning to everything else we do and make us better people in the process.
And if that’s not enough to convince you of the value of reading, here’s a little secret for all you writers out there: Reading is the single best way to become a better writer. Today’s best authors are the ones who have read extensively themselves. The writers of those classics we still read today, hundreds of years after their initial publication, read the works of authors who came before them. Pick up almost any good book and you’ll find at least one allusion to another good book. Perhaps those great authors are onto something. Perhaps we should all read to inspire ourselves, to be better at whatever it is we’re doing.
I hope you’ll join me this month in recommitting yourself to getting caught reading. I promise you won’t be sorry!
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