Still Reading

On the plane back from Denver, I read a great essay by Ursula K. LeGuin in the February issue of Harper's. She writes about the supposed decline of the book, referring to books as if they were an endangered species. She then goes on to disspell this fear in many ways, mostly by using examples from history to explain how it was never the majority of the population reading literature in the first place.

She writes, "Reading is not 'interactive' with a set of rules or options, as games are; reading is actual collaboration with the writer's mind. No wonder not everybody is up to it."

In some ways, that statement might seem a bit on the snobby side, but it's not nearly as snobby as Steve Jobs' assumption that the Kindle (the electronic book reader from Amazon) is worthless because no one reads books anymore. Jobs, creator of all things i, apparently read one statistic in the paper without doing further research and thought the book was dead. Timothy Egan wrote a great blog about this for the New York Times.

I have to admit, in recent months I have found myself in quiet moments fretting about the book dying in my lifetime. I imagine cities without libraries and everyone walking around, eyes glued to their own little independent tv screen. But it amounts to so much nonsense. I think what's really happening is that in today's age we poll everyone about everything. And without poll results from past decades and centuries to compare to, we panic needlessly. Add to that the desire to have others love the things you love the most, and you can see how this little fear about the death of the book comes about. But for now, at least, I think the book is safe. Between Oprah and the huge amount of hype over the new book Beautiful Children and the fact that so many people are worrying about it's demise, the book seems to be as powerful as ever.