Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out

by Shannon Reed

When I ask my creative writing students at the University of Pittsburgh to tell me stories about themselves as readers, I hear anecdotes like that one. They, too, were constantly exhorted by nearby adults to put their books down and look around on family trips (I nearly missed spotting Old Faithful in Yellowstone because I was nose-deep in a Nancy Drew). They, too, chose reading over most other activities, and, like me, many were punished for minor infractions by having books taken away for a day, leaving us to watch television—the horror!—for entertainment. They, too, packed and still pack multiple books for any trips of more than a city block in distance (although e-readers have saved all of our backs, thankfully). Like me, they read and continue to read at any and all lulling moments of life: on the toilet, brushing one’s teeth, in line at the post office, on any form of public transportation, by audiobook when driving.

Like the Russian proverb about how one fisherman spots another from one hundred yards away, I feel a familial affection for my fellow longtime, intense readers. We are kin. Quiet, introspective, tea-and-cozy-quilt-loving kin.

Every once in a while, a patron will tell me that they loved the book I’d suggested, and I feel a particular pleasure: I’ve introduced a friend to a friend.

But that was unusual for me. I was and generally am, as my students say, a Try Hard. Even when it truly did not matter, globally or personally, I still did the work I was assigned. My grave marker may someday read She read every page.

Reading is a solitary pursuit, by nature, but the pleasure of discussing what one has read is deeply collective, the reason why we seek out book clubs, press a novel we enjoyed into a friend’s hands, and jet to review sites to warn others away from (or beckon them into) a book. All sorts of wonderful things happen when my students talk about the books we’re reading together: they realize that they were not the only person who didn’t understand chapter 3; they learn which of their classmates has the most insightful ideas; they mirror the pleasures and sorrows of the narrative to each other; and, I dearly hope, they make friends with their fellow readers.

The collective catharsis a sad book can bring doesn’t require that it be read aloud. The mania has faded now, but at the end of my time teaching high school, many of my students were besotted with John Green’s YA novel The Fault in Our Stars, which came out in early 2012. That book... Well, let me just say tears will be jerked. It’s a very good, very sad book about kids with cancer. Copies of The Fault in Our Stars were passed around among the readers of my little school, and because the book is unputdownable, for a few weeks, I would frequently spot someone reading it in class, ineffectively hiding it in their laps, giant tears dropping onto their desks. I have a soft spot for kids who’d rather read than pay attention to grammar lessons, so I usually just dropped off a tissue as I walked by.

They might not have been reading it aloud or all at once, but the readers were experiencing that novel together. They talked about it in the cafeteria, on the walk home, and even in papers and projects for my class. I eventually came to understand that while my students loved the book for many reasons, at least one of them was that its tragedy allowed them to rehearse loss. How badly can something hurt? How hard can losing someone be? How awful will profound grief feel? Those answers are not always present in a sad book, but glimmers of what’s ahead might

was not one of the children who needed to be coaxed. I read, a lot, already: in the bathroom, in the car, in the dentist’s chair, waiting for my dad to pick me and my cello up, at my brother’s soccer games, and while theoretically helping my mom with dinner. I read as we drove through the raw natural beauty of Yosemite National Park and missed seeing several bears. I read during my math classes at school, when I definitely should have been listening.2 In other words, I did not need to be enticed to read more. I also did not need to eat more Pizza Hut pizza. This is not a commentary on my health, or on whether anyone should be eating Pizza Hut all that often, but a statement of fact. When I was a child, there was a Pizza Hut a short walk from our house, and it was my absolute favorite place to dine, which led to a weekly scene in our living room. My father wondered aloud to my mother where we should get dinner, and I would race in from three rooms away to suggest Pizza Hut. I didn’t get my way all the time, but it was often enough.

Books do have a main point after all, but it changes for each reader, and for each group of people puzzling their way to it.

lights up brightly and put an Office Noises playlist on, while I made

I grew up in a mortality-aware household. The concept of death is one I don’t remember learning; it was always there, something I understood as best as I could without personal experience. My father was a Lutheran pastor, and his work suffused our lives, with its proximity to life and death, sickness and health.

In the past, he notes, aging was an abrupt decline: “Life and health would putter along nicely... Then illness would hit and the bottom would drop out...” But because of our superior health care these days, our descent into decline looks less like a cliff and “more like a hilly road down a mountain.”