The Good Reader
The ‘Good Reader’! Oh, the irony of it all is too much for me to reveal in full. I am an imposter, a fraud, masquerading in a world a know little about or indeed fully appreciate. I used to gest with my wife about the quality of the books she was reading, more to wind her up playfully than anything else. To my naïve mind it was quantity over quality, for every 20 books she would consume I would only consume one. If I was to take the same ratio for films, then out of 20 films I would only pick one and the others would be trash.
So, I’m claiming to be an author and I’ve put myself into the centre of the Colosseum where thousands of book connoisseurs have gathered to feast on the delights of my prose and I expose myself as a pariah, someone who doesn’t belong in this arena. But, why? Why would I do that? It’s clearly not for the money!
“Feed him to lions”, chants the angry crowd.
I don’t have the answer, I have no defence, other than I am a lost soul. Can I win the crowd? I’m not a young boy who can plead his innocence, bending the empathetic maternal ears of the crowd. I’m a grown man, an equal, no salvation will be given, no second chance to start my life over. I have no choice but to prove my worth. I am out of time, I cannot rewind the clock and hone those skills, reinstate and log those thousands upon thousands of hours of reading. I am a grown man, but I feel like a small child with only a wooden sword to protect me. As I look to the crowd, I read their faces; 950 books read; 2000 followers; 390 friends. Each sporting fictional cloaks and literary gowns.
How am I to compete in this arena? Do I bow down and allow the feast to ensue, gorging the hungry eyes of the crowd? Or have I read it all wrong? Have I misinterpreted the written word? Have I allowed my dyslexia to warp my emotions? Or have I simply failed to appreciate how wonderful books can be and how much joy and happiness they bring to so many in society?
As a child growing up in a single parent family, my mum and my Auntie would devour books like…like… Well let’s just skip the metaphor, you know what I mean. My Auntie in particular, could read at a dizzying speed. I just couldn’t get it. Much as they tried to teach me how to speed read, I couldn’t understand how you could get enjoyment from skipping parts of the book. To my logical mind, it made no sense to bulk a book to sell a copy, only for the reader to skip to the good bits. For me, every word, sentence and paragraph had to continue without fault. It just wasn’t possible to immerse myself in the same fictional world that they could. I couldn’t translate the words on the page into a fantasy world in my brain.
Only in my 20’s did I start to read books cover to cover. So, it’s disappointing all these years later that the Government brings out the same Shakespeare to inspire the next generation! If it didn’t work for me then what chance do my kids have now. How many great authors do we now have in this world and still our children have to dissect and analyse the likes of Hamlet and Macbeth?
So, is it possible to be a Writer and not a Reader? Should we embrace change or is Shakespeare truly the God of all literature and I simply accept it with grace and humility?!
So, I’m claiming to be an author and I’ve put myself into the centre of the Colosseum where thousands of book connoisseurs have gathered to feast on the delights of my prose and I expose myself as a pariah, someone who doesn’t belong in this arena. But, why? Why would I do that? It’s clearly not for the money!
“Feed him to lions”, chants the angry crowd.
I don’t have the answer, I have no defence, other than I am a lost soul. Can I win the crowd? I’m not a young boy who can plead his innocence, bending the empathetic maternal ears of the crowd. I’m a grown man, an equal, no salvation will be given, no second chance to start my life over. I have no choice but to prove my worth. I am out of time, I cannot rewind the clock and hone those skills, reinstate and log those thousands upon thousands of hours of reading. I am a grown man, but I feel like a small child with only a wooden sword to protect me. As I look to the crowd, I read their faces; 950 books read; 2000 followers; 390 friends. Each sporting fictional cloaks and literary gowns.
How am I to compete in this arena? Do I bow down and allow the feast to ensue, gorging the hungry eyes of the crowd? Or have I read it all wrong? Have I misinterpreted the written word? Have I allowed my dyslexia to warp my emotions? Or have I simply failed to appreciate how wonderful books can be and how much joy and happiness they bring to so many in society?
As a child growing up in a single parent family, my mum and my Auntie would devour books like…like… Well let’s just skip the metaphor, you know what I mean. My Auntie in particular, could read at a dizzying speed. I just couldn’t get it. Much as they tried to teach me how to speed read, I couldn’t understand how you could get enjoyment from skipping parts of the book. To my logical mind, it made no sense to bulk a book to sell a copy, only for the reader to skip to the good bits. For me, every word, sentence and paragraph had to continue without fault. It just wasn’t possible to immerse myself in the same fictional world that they could. I couldn’t translate the words on the page into a fantasy world in my brain.
Only in my 20’s did I start to read books cover to cover. So, it’s disappointing all these years later that the Government brings out the same Shakespeare to inspire the next generation! If it didn’t work for me then what chance do my kids have now. How many great authors do we now have in this world and still our children have to dissect and analyse the likes of Hamlet and Macbeth?
So, is it possible to be a Writer and not a Reader? Should we embrace change or is Shakespeare truly the God of all literature and I simply accept it with grace and humility?!
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