Like a Good Neighbor, a Book Is Always There

In my book ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature, I mention that reading a book is like talking with a neighbor. William Faulkner expresses this idea in the following quote: The books I read are the ones I knew and loved when I was a young man and to which I return as you do to friends: the Old Testament, Dickens, Conrad, Cervantes--Don Quixote. I read that every year, as some do the Bible....I've read these books so often that I don't always begin at page one and read on to the end. I just read one scene, or about one character just as you'd meet and talk to a friend for a few minutes. I never really enjoyed the Faulkner I read in college, probably because I didn't really understand it. But anyone who read Don Quixote every year is worth a second chance. I'll have to put The Sound and the Fury or Go Down, Moses on my "to read" list.

Are ROMANs Elite?

John at SF Signal reviewed my free ebook ROMAN Reading in post called When in Rome...Do as Elitists Do? I really appreciate the time he took to read the book and write about it. His comments actually illustrate a couple of the elements of ROMAN Reading: Asking questions about what you read, and Naming your experiences. One of the questions he asks is if the neighborhood analogy is elitist. Here are his thoughts: Encouraging reading is a good thing, but I detect a smack of reading elitism here, particularly in this passage: Books are like neighbors, and your personal library is your neighborhood. Take a look at your bookshelves. What kind of neighborhood are you living in? Are you in a slum or in the suburbs? Who are your neighbors? Are they trash talkers or shrewd sages? If you live next door to Socrates, then invite him to dinner every night. If you live next to Dan Brown, then put your house on the market. He goes on to say: I sometimes hear people speak as if (or say outright that) reading is not a worthwhile activity unless you are reading Literature with a capital L. Enter self-doubt. Am I wasting my time by reading anything else? Am I denying myself the true value of reading? Am I becoming a literary snob? Is this self-doubt the beginning of a midlife crisis? What great questions! I began to leave John a comment, but it kept getting longer and longer, so I thought I'd respond here. Again, I'd like to thank John for mentioning the book and linking to it. First let me say that I have "lowbrow" tastes in books, too--my favorites span a wide range: on the "lower" end I have such favorites as pulp hero Doc Savage, the Stainless Steel Rat series by Harry Harrison, the Conan series, and any short story collection with Alfred Hitchcock in the title. Reading for fun is as necessary as taking the weekend off from work, or going on an extended vacation every once in a while. Not every book is meant to educate or inspire. What I was trying to say with the neighborhood analogy (while poking a little fun at Dan Brown), is that behind every book is a real person. Books have as much power to influence us as the friends we hang around. Each person must choose their own friends, but if I see my teenage son constantly getting into trouble because of the influence of his friends, I will try and point that out to him. In the same way, books can have a positive or negative effect on us, and I was trying to remind my readers of that. I'd like to insert one of my favorite quotes here. It's by Father John Hardon, and you can find it on every page of this blog: "Everything we read stimulates our mind to think, and what we think determines what we desire, and desires are the seedbed of our actions. Given this iron law of human nature--from reading to thinking, to desiring, to acting--we are shaping our destiny by the ideas we choose to have enter our minds through print." Are there some books that I think everyone should read? Yes, I must admit that I believe there are. Not necessarily because they are "better" than others, but because they have so much to offer everyone. Think of it this way: Aren't there some people who are just so inspirational and intelligent (and even holy) that everyone would benefit from meeting them? Mother Teresa comes to mind. Well, I can't meet Mother Teresa in person anymore because she has passed on, but I can read what she left behind and get to know her through her books. She is someone I think everyone would have benefited from meeting. There's also some faulty logic that people can slip into when talking about books. I'm guilty of it myself at times. I occasionally fall into the trap of putting books into two categories: (1) fun books, and (2) literature. The mistake is thinking that these two categories are mutually exclusive. What has happened to me as I've expanded my reading is that the books I used to think of as "fun" (like Conan, for instance) have actually become a bit boring and not as entertaining as they used to be. What I find now is that literature is more fun and entertaining to me, and much of the enjoyment comes from wrestling with the author's ideas. If you "wrestled" with my ideas in ROMAN Reading, I hope it gave you some enjoyment. I'm sorry if it seemed elitist, and I hope this post has clarified things a bit. Thanks again, John, for your challenging remarks and for linking to Literary Compass.

How to Turn a Book into a Treasured Heirloom

(Cross-posted at ROMAN Reading) Stefanie at So Many Books has just posted a review of ROMAN Reading and it's generating some great comments about marking in books. Here's one by Whatladder that I particularly like: My husband claims that his favourite book ever is the copy of the Norton Anthology of Poetry I gave him that had all my pencilled notes in it. What a terrific reminder of the value of marking in books. Besides helping you engage in the text, writing in a book also leaves a visible sign of your presence. When Whatladder's husband reads her marked up book of poetry, he's not just coming into contact with great writers, he's getting to know his wife more intimately. She's there in those pages--her ideas, her reactions, her spirit. I think it's beautifully romantic that her husband has recognized that. Can you imagine a more meaningful and personal family heirloom than a library of books full of our own thoughts, comments and insights? Think of our children and grandchildren reading through them, getting to know their ancestors. I would love to have a set of books written in by my grandparents. We only get to know our parents and grandparents when they're older; what if we could read their minds when they were our age? What if I could know what my own father thought about life when he was twenty or thirty or forty? Leaving comments in books gives us that chance. Let's take it a step further: What if your grandmother wrote comments in her copy of Pride and Prejudice, for example. And what if your mother inherited it and added her comments to her mother's? And now the book is yours. Not only do you have a treasured physical possession, you also have something far more valuable: your mother's and grandmother's intimate thoughts and emotions captured for a brief moment on paper. But there's more: Now you have the chance to add your own reflections, insights and reactions to the book for your daughter to read. Here's an idea: Buy a book with one of your children or grandchildren in mind and read it, marking it up as you go. You can direct the comments directly to them, or you can simply mark it up as you would any piece of literature. After you've finished the book, wrap it up and give it to them as a present. Save it for graduation, or their wedding, or a significant birthday. Maybe give it to them on their confirmation or bar mitzvah, or at a baby shower. For more about marking up a text, download my free ebook ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature.

ROMAN Reading Now Available as a Free Audio Book

(Cross posted at ROMANReading.com) My free eBook ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature is now available as a free mp3 download at FreeIQ. To download the file you have to get a free acount, but once you join you'll have access to some great content. I've also made the audio book available as streaming audio, so that you can embed the file on your blog if you want, like this: Get the Flash Player to see this player. For more on why I wrote the book and why I'm giving it away for free, see this post, where you can also find a link to download it.

My Apologies

I'm sorry if some of you were asked to join FreeIQ yesterday when you tried to download my new eBook. I didn't realize FreeIQ required you to log in to download free items. I have since changed all the links to Scribd, so there shouldn't be any more problems. You can still visit my FreeIQ page to sign up for the ROMAN Reading newsletter. Sorry for the mix-up. If you tried unsuccessfully to download it yesterday, give it a try today. Alternatively, you can email me and I'll send it directly to you as a pdf attachment.

ROMAN Reading Will Improve Your Reading Habits in Under an Hour

My new eBook ROMAN Reading: 5 Practical Skills for Transforming Your Life through Literature is available for free today! Download ROMAN Reading (1.86 mb) and in less than an hour you'll have learned reading skills that last a lifetime. I've been teaching these skills for over sixteen years, and I can teach you. For free. Why? Because I have a mission, and I want you to share it with me. The mission? Changing lives one page at a time. I want to make the world a more literate place, a place where people think for themselves, learn about their world, and share their ideas with each other. A literate world is a world of peace, tolerance and vision. We've got our work cut out for us. To help accomplish this mission, I'm giving this eBook away for free. But I need your help. I need you to turn this eBook into a virus that sweeps the world, a reading infection that keeps spreading itself from friend to friend, reader to reader. We need to get this book into the hands of reading groups, teachers, homeschoolers, high school and college students, and interested readers of all ages. How can you help? Download the book and read it! Share it with all your friends. Visit www.RomanReading.com often for more tips on reading literature. (Linking to it would help too!) Sign up for the ROMAN Reading newsletter at FreeIQ. Together we can make the world a more literate place by changing lives one page at a time. On this feast of St. Joseph the Worker, please pray that ROMAN Reading makes a positive difference, no matter how small.