On being Kindled

I’ve been Kindled!  I realised this for certain one day last week.  

It happened like this:

The room I rather pretentiously call my office, is stacked high with bookshelves groaning under the weight of loved tomes.  Many, many times I’ve tried to Feng Shui my life and clear my clutter, but my books remain.  Sometimes they become temporarily rehoused into bags and boxes which I tell myself will be donated to the charity shop, but I’m kidding no one.  All that really means is that they come down from their high shelves to reside closer to the floor.

 

How can I get rid of them when I never know if and when I’ll want to re-read them?  When I lose books from dire necessity (such as moving from one country to another) or because someone has taken the liberty of borrowing them and not returning them, I’m bereft.  I remember books I read many years ago and which I sometimes have a fancy to read again but I no longer have them and they’re long out of print and I feel something nearly like pain.

When I do have an urge to re-read one of my books, I know exactly where to find it and half the pleasure is in the anticipation of reaching up to the shelf and luring it with my fingertips into my hands.  The other day I wanted to look up a passage from Jane Austen’s ‘Persuasion’.  I happen to have a large and incredibly tatty (well it is the most frequently-read book on the shelf) volume of Austen’s works.  I found the passage I was looking for immediately (as well as a collection of pressed four-leaf clovers and cards with long-forgotten scribblings on them) but instead of closing the book, I carried on reading.  One page, two pages and I was hooked.  Again.  I knew I had to sit and re-read the whole story.

Once I thought nothing of carrying that great volume around with me to read on London underground on my way to work; it went to university with me and still bears the scars in the form of pencilled annotations; I read it during coffee breaks or under my desk at work; lying in the garden; curled up on the sofa or snuggled up in bed.  I never considered its size to be an inconvenience.  Until last week.

The problem is, I’ve got so used to the convenience of the Kindle that the book seemed unwieldy; the print was small and the pages, like the spine were growing pale and fragile.  And there on Amazon was a Kindle version for a mere 77 pence.  Within a minute it was sitting on my Kindle.

But it didn’t stop there! 

I’ve  long been intending to re-read John Fowles’ ‘The Magus’ and duly went to my shelf to coax it into my waiting hands.  As a matter of interest, you might want to know that this book is 656 pages long.  Wouldn’t have bothered me in the least a year ago.  But then a year ago I didn’t have a Kindle.  And it only took a minute to do an Amazon search and download it.  I didn’t intend to.  I just looked out of curiosity, but then…

A year ago I quite distinctly remember agreeing with those people who said e-readers would never take over entirely from books.  Never, I agreed loudly.  I love my books – they are part of me…or rather they were.  But so too now is my Kindle.  I doubt I will clear my bookshelves just yet – after all, where would I press my four-leaf clovers - but given a choice between a good old-fashioned hard- or paperback and an e-book version, I’m afraid I’ve already made my choice.  I’ve been converted.  I’ve been Kindled!  Have you?

Why Don't Our Children Read Anymore?

The best memory I have of my childhood is curling up on the upstairs landing (which only I knew had the warmest radiator in the house) on those bleak and desultory days of the seemingly endless winter holidays and losing myself for hours on end in fictional realms.  TV was a paltry runner-up to the richness of my life in literature.  I lived it and breathed it right alongside the characters in whose lives and dramas some kindly author had invited me to partake.  The whole household could have collapsed about my ears and I would not have noticed.

I still frequently go AWOL from the real world when I become engrossed in a good story.  I suppose I simply have no self-control, but the pleasure of reading makes me realise how thin so many other modern pleasures are.  Read a good book and something permeates your soul and stays with you forever.  Which, of course, is why I’m so sad that so many of our children today are missing out on that wonderful gift.

By ‘our’ I’m referring to children in a collective or national sense.  You know, that ubiquitous ‘younger generation’ we oldies are all so worried about.  I have certainly been worrying about this increasing problem for the past decade, but not for the more obvious reasons.  My own son is an avid reader – always was, always will be.  When I watch him devour literature and see him reap the rewards of something he does purely for pleasure, I feel sad that so many other young people are missing out on a wonderful experience.

I’m sure that wherever you are in the country, you’ve participated at some point in these ‘Good As New’ sales organised so beautifully by dedicated volunteers raising money for cancer research or similar worthy charities.  These sales are a great way to dispose of good quality clothing, equipment, games and books while helping needy charities.  For one reason or another I had a great collection of (brand new) children’s literature I no longer needed, all written by wonderful, award-winning children’s authors.  I also had a collection of used Simpsons comic books.

I’d be disappointed in you if you didn’t know where I was going here!  What sold?  Yes of course, you guessed.  What was disappointing was that even at giveaway prices – a tiny fraction of their retail value - parents did not see the value of buying high quality literature for their children.  Incidentally, this sale was in one of the more affluent London suburbs and the car park was crammed to capacity by people-carriers carrying very few people.

As a former English teacher I’ve always been deeply concerned about the reading habits of the young.  Correction, what I really mean is ‘lack of reading habits’.   When I first began teaching – and believe it or not, that wasn’t back in the dark ages, reading was still considered to be acceptable, even pleasurable.  Libraries were the hub of the school and book fairs the highlight of the term.  When visiting authors came, the children would be held spellbound; happily spending their pocket money stocking up their bookshelves and writing appreciative fan letters en masse without any prompting. 

I myself ran school book-clubs and from the day they placed their order until the day of delivery, children would stop me in corridors and playground asking me when their book orders would arrive.  When I became head of English, my mission was not just to maintain that enthusiasm but to increase it.  I wanted parents to be more involved as well, in order to capture some of those reluctant readers in the net.  I spent three-quarters of my departmental budget on exciting new books which had all been carefully researched by caring staff and students.

But gradually I saw a decline in interest.  Children no longer wanted to read.  Year after year each new intake proved to be less literate than the last and even less interested in reading.  Book fairs and book clubs dwindled away due to lack of interest and library lessons offered little more than opportunities for collective worship in the non-fiction section for boys or huddled gatherings of girls pretending to pour over an illustrated Shakespeare while they quietly discussed the latest gossip or read each other’s text messages.

The real crunch came a few years ago in the A Level classes, when students professing a desire to study English Literature at university claimed to hate reading.  When asked why they had chosen Literature, the answers varied from:  ‘Well I really enjoyed Pride and Prejudice.  I mean Keira Knightley was okay, but Matthew Macfadyen...’; to ‘I like Shakespeare.  Laurence Fishburne as Othello was really excellent.’

I harangued my students mercilessly every time they asked if there was a DVD of the text we were studying.  (In my defence, I’m not claiming that films have no place in the teaching of literature, just that they should provide the little ornament on the top of the tree, not constitute the whole of Christmas).  Students invariably said they found it so much easier to watch a film than read a book.

But as year upon year this antipathy towards reading – and in particular classical literature – grew and the internet made it (or so the students thought) so much easier to cheat on their essays, teaching literature became more about policing students than teaching them and sharing in their discoveries.  Today more and more children simply cannot be bothered to read.  Teachers don’t just have to worry about plagiarism anymore – there are numerous agencies all over the world employing people willing to write students’ assignments for a paltry sum.  And sadly these are beyond the refined searching tentacles of Google.  The system allows lazy students to avoid even glancing at the great literature they were meant to study.  And the chances are, if they don't do it now, they won't in the future.

Good teachers can inspire children in lessons, certainly, but much depends on students' willingness to go away and read, think and discover for themselves.  Nowadays, sadly, children are less and less inclined to make the time in their fast-paced lives to do just that.  If they can find a shortcut, they will take it.  I didn’t set out to moralise on the rights and wrongs of this (though doubtless my position is fairly clear), I just feel depressed that it is happening and worry about how sadly impoverished future generations will be. 

Maybe the media can compensate?  Personally, I must confess that I doubt it. 

 Posted on Yahoo this week:  

[I am 16 years old and so far i think I've read only 1 book lol. I think i will like books with mystery, science fiction. horror, fantasy, crime genre.I've been reading alot of manga .Its never too late to start .Bad english I hope you understand.]

Need I say more?