Gary's Mostly Pointless Blog

In the past six months or so, I’ve taken a far more active interest in the written word.  This is partly because of my ambitions to become a successful writer and partly because of the long-buried and all too common non-reader’s guilt. For whatever reason, your average person simply doesn’t read too often.  A 2007 AP report reported that 1 in 4 adults failed to read a single book in the previous year.  No one likes to feel unintelligent and no one likes to be excluded from something, this includes the literary world.  Lack of reading does both and did both to me.

You see, I was not a very good English student.  In fact, I came very close to not graduating High School due to a near failing English grade.  I just found it all so utterly and completely boring.  Besides, Keenland race track was nearby and how cool is it to skip school to go bet on a few horses?  But it wasn’t only that I found English class and reading books to be boring, it also seemed irrelevant and arbitrary to boot.  “I mean seriously!” says a version of me that is ten years younger than the current model.  “What the hell do I care about a participle or stuff that was written hundreds of years ago?!  I mean, stories are cool but if it’s really good, they’ll make it into a movie.  Besides, reading is boring.”

Yes, I know what you devoted bibliophiles are thinking: “Kill the non-believer!”

Before you go for your torches and pitchforks, please know that I’ve changed.  Television and film just aren’t as magical to me as they once were and I now take most of my entertainment in word form.  Actually, I feel a little bit like a double agent or live a kind of double life.  I currently work on a military base and live around soldiers and vets.  While military folks are good people, there isn’t exactly a desperate outcry for book clubs and library funding.  My handful of local friends are all tank mechanics and the like, so literature isn’t exactly a popular interest.  Despite this, we get along fine; they suffer through my diatribes about books and I suffer through theirs about motorcycles.  What’s odd to me is that they tend to think of me as a “reader” (stick two fingers in the air and make them go up and down…yeah, I’m that guy) and they have this kind of wariness about me.  It’s like I have some disease or that I have some troubling past.

I usually have at least one book with me and I read when I get a spare moment.  I especially like taking a book with me to a restaurant.  While I’m waiting for the food to come and after I finish, I take my time and read till I have to move along.  More than a little often, I’ll catch these  odd glances from strangers.  They’ll look at me a little longer than maybe they had planned and when I look up, they look away.  A lot of times, people will see me reading and give me a look that seems to say, “Oh, he’s one of those types.”

I think that the common belief among non-readers is that people read in public (or at all) simply to show off, as ridiculous as this may seem.  I know this to be somewhat true because I used to think it once upon a time.  I think this stems from a fear of feeling less intelligent and simple non-interest in reading.  I wouldn’t call it ignorance, except when expressed as ignobly as Kanye West did in a Rolling Stone interview:

“Sometimes people write novels and they just be so wordy and so self-absorbed…I am not a fan of books. I would never want a book’s autograph. I am a proud non-reader of books.”

Never mind the fact that making fun of Kanye West is as easy as finding a Jonas Brothers fan in an all-girl school.  Never mind the fact that his mother was actually a College Professor of English with a PHD.  Never mind the fact that HE ACTUALLY WROTE A BOOK (one that is 52 pages long, and was co-authored with someone else…and, good lord, read those reviews).  The fact that someone actually thought this, then said it to a reporter for a nationally published magazine is astounding.  Then again, Kanye isn’t known for his quiet reserve.  The man is either the greatest satirist in human history or the biggest celebrity dumbass we have at our disposal.

One of my favorite comedians, Bill Hicks, told a story about reading a book.  The short, clean version is this:

“I was sitting in a Waffle House restaurant, reading a book and this waitress asked me ‘Whatcha readin’ for?’  Isn’t that the weirdest question you’ve ever heard?  Not ‘what am I reading?’ but ‘what am I reading for?’  What am I reading for?  I guess so I don’t have to work as a waitress at the Waffle House.”

That’s a bit harsher than I’d go with it, but the concept is the same.  So, if you’re reading this and you’re not exactly an avid reader, ask yourself this: do you really want to be on the same side as Kanye West…about anything?

I mean, when it comes down to it, don’t you–