You know you ought to. Perhaps you have even told yourself, say, in the evening after someone convinced you to go with them to see Shakespeare in the Park, or some classical concert or ballet—The Nutcracker or The Messiah at Christmastime, and you came home and said, That was so wonderful! I think I’m going to try and cultivate my mind. I’m gonna start reading great books. And you went to bed with a belly full of good intentions, but the next morning the dream had vanished. You never actually followed through. In the moment when you could go grab a book, it seemed so hard, you tell yourself you’ve had a hard day. You deserve to just veg out and catch up on IG. And the old ingrained habits win the day again.
Maybe you’ve made New Year’s resolutions to read a book a month, but by January 3rd you lost the will and never made it past the first hundred pages. You had trouble following the story, you couldn’t keep those damned Russian names straight, or you got lost in long sentences with too many details.
My friend, I hear you. If you have a story about wishing you read more but for whatever reason you haven’t, I am here to tell you, You must not give up. That impulse you had, the sweet voice you heard was the Divine Spirit whispering into your ear, the Voice of Wisdom crying out to you,
To you, all humanity, I call,
and my cry is to the children of the earth.
O simple ones, learn prudence;
O fools, learn sense.
Hear, for I will speak noble things,
and from my lips will come what is right,
I am issuing a call to all of my readers, discover reading again. Fight the good fight of laying down your smartphones, turning off the television in the evenings, get away from your computers. Go get a book and slash your way to a quiet, comfortable chair. Silence your phone. Sit in your car if you have to. But take up reading again.
Audiobooks? Nah, they’re not the same. Sure, you might hear a good story, but you need to be able to stop, reread certain words or lines, pause and think. Save audiobooks for when you are in the car or exercising. But don’t underestimate the healing power of good, old-fashioned books.
Where to start? I have two ideas for you.
First, why not go back and read the books you had to read for school, the ones you’ve forgotten but still have familiarity with? Remember those titles? Recall the pride you feel when you get to talk about the great books you read in school?
- The Great Gatsby
- To Kill A Mockingbird
- The Mayor of Casterbridge
- Catcher in the Rye
- The Scarlet Letter
- Fahrenheit 451
- The Diary of Anne Frank
- The Heart of Darkness
- Jane Eyre
- Of Mice and Men
Second, plunder the reading from my book club, The Austin Athenaeum, which has been meeting for over 30 years.
You can see our entire reading list at this link.
In recent years, my wife and I have started a committed regimen of eating whole foods and avoiding processed foods. We want to have healthy bodies going into our older years, making up for years of eating junk that was sold to us in the 70’s and 80’s, stuff that made us fat and unhealthy. We’re exercising more, and all that stuff.
If you have had a similar awakening with regard to food and bodily health, you should approach your mind and intellectual health with the same renewal and enlightenment. Come on, we all know that cell phones are roting our minds. Go get a book and take up reading again.
