How Not to Read a Book

Alex Beam offers great advice in a recent Boston Globe column, about how not to read a book.

I fancy myself a voracious reader, but the truth is that I let many books pile up and gather dust.  So it's good to know how to handle situations in which everyone else seems to have read a book you've merely intended to complete.

The best book not to read right now is Bob Woodward's State of Denial, which treats as news the well-known fact that the war in Iraq is a disaster.  Last week a member of my book club had that book on her lap (it wasn't what we read as a group).  This stimulated the latent conservative tendencies of a book club member, leading to an amusing scene.

I will never read State of Denial, however, and thanks to Beam I know I don't have to. 

Here's how not to read a book:

1. Read excerpts in newspapers and magazines
2. Watch news coverage (when applicable)
3. Read reviews (of course)
4. Listen attentively during conversations about prominent books, and filch the best lines for your next conversation
5. Spend hours reading without buying in bookstores.  Beam considers bookstores to be "glorified libraries."  And these libraries serve good coffee and offer delicious snacks.

All good advice, particularly about paying attention during conversations.  I just wonder how often everyone in a group converses about something that nobody has read. After all, who would know?

Comments

[Helen]

I would never pretend having read a book that I haven't read. And, for the life of me, I don't remember the last time my friends and I talked about books. Aren't there more interesting things to talk about than books???

Actually, I do remember the last time my friend Glen and I discussed books. It went like this: "What did you get for Christmas?" "I got XXX, XXX, and a couple of science fiction books from my parents." "Cool."

[Wevbo]

Marcus,

Great post and good tips, very funny.

Helen, I agree that there are some things that are more interesting to talk about than books, but not many, and very few of the things Americans choose to talk about in place of books (stock tips, celebrities, Fox News). I'm not sure I'm clear what we're talking about when we say "books"--all books fall into the same category? Novels, studies, poems, memoir, graphic novels? Do you mean "reading" in general? I'm not sure how to distinguish a newspaper or magazine article from a book, based on that criteria, except maybe by length.

A friend once explained to me Foucault's idea of assumed consensus (I think it was called), by which people talk and say things like, "you know what I mean," "yadda yadda yadda," "etcetera" and the other person nods and says yes I know what you mean. And in saying and agreeing with those words, they assume that they know what the other is saying it without saying it. But you don't really know, and often, if you take the time to explain it, you can find a good deal of divergence in the ideas you think that you agree on. But the agreement becomes a sort of false unity, and in closed communities (academia, workplace, etc.), often enforces a kind of groupthink that can stifle growth, creativity, and change.

I think that "faking your way" through books encourages that sort of false unity in the same way that partisan newsreporting, or even the assumption of partisan newsreporting, encourages people to dismiss reporting by dismissing the source rather than the content. "Oh sure, it's anti-Clinton--it's from a guy who works for Fox News!" for example.

Reading is not valued by our culture because people assume there are shortcuts to finding the information they need (or worse, like Stanley Fish, claim there is no information to ever be found). However, we seem to be grouping ourselves into ever-tighter enclaves of fighters who bicker over the same few catch-phrases slowly losing their meaning.

The solution? Read more, read more often. I think that poetry and fiction provide much more clever avenues to new ideas than nonfiction, where the "true stories" are often alarmingly manufactured, outright false ("embellished" is another great, meaningless word), poorly written, and full of retread.

Great post, again, it really made me think!

John

[Helen]

I enjoy reading fictions once in a while, but I am more drawn to nonfictions because they are closer to the truth than fictions. New ideas do not have to be entirely fabricated in someone's head and then transferred directly to letters on the screen. New ideas to us can be real and actual in the very lives other people lead, and by reading about them in nonfictional writing, we learn of these "new" ideas and in turn generate our own.