I'm sexy and I'm reading
In my
preparation for the Weird Wednesday feature, whose launch date remains as January
4th 2012, I have encountered something about my reading I have not
paid much attention to and I assume is private due to the nature of my language
situation. I know enough English to write, read and express myself on an above
average level among my peers, who have had the same educational profile and
have not studied English at university level. Reading books has never been
challenging, apart from those written in an intentionally modified English [“The
Color Purple”] or older books [“The Vampyre”]. Being a native benefits the
reading experience in such cases, but otherwise I’m doing fine with literature.
Or so I would
think. Until recently, I’ve been ignoring a trend in my reading, exemplifying
an interest in quantity of reading rather than quality. Back in my school
years, when I studied in a private group every weekend on top of my school
studies, my teacher used to make us read everything and anything. Newspaper
articles, magazine articles, book passage, passages from a more scientific
text, from and outside our textbooks. Eventually we moved to books and we had
to read a book over the summer, mark down all the new words and add those to
our own vocabulary, so that when the time came to talk about the books, a
barrier has been lifted and I understood more about the book. This continued
during high school, where I studied typical US/UK classics such as The Picture
of Dorian Grey, The Scarlet Letter, Pride and Prejudice and Jane Ayre. While I
enjoyed all these books, I can’t say the same about the reading, notes with new
words, bringing out the dictionary, spending afternoons writing the new words
and pronouncing them and then returning to the text. This killed the joy in
reading and at the time I had grown to be an avid, if a bit slow a reader.
You have to
understand that for a teenager, studying causes an allergic reaction, which
brings out chronic postponing of any kind of academic activities. At the time,
I felt like studying will never end for me and I tried to avoid anything to do
with studying. So when I graduated and took up reviewing, I took to reading for
pleasure, which is to say that I only read. Never tried to engage with the text
in another way. If there was something that I didn’t understand then I would
use the context and go on with the story. Sometimes this helped me get through
some books easier with minor communication breakdowns between me and the text.
Other times I had lucked out and did need a dictionary to help me along the
way. “A Book of Tongues” is a perfect example of how the prose acted against
me, no matter how much I loved reading this twisted tale. This time around I
did try to get out some of the words, translate, then assemble all the
fragments of understanding and confusion into a coherent narrative, but seeing
as how I fell behind on my schedule and diminished chances of reading more
books, writing more of the self-serving reviews I did back then, fighting to
come ahead the bloggers who read more and faster, I rushed the process and
never returned to it.
It’s complicated
to explain what I mean by ‘passive’ or ‘reactive’ reading, but it deals with a preoccupancy
with number of books read, the act of having read something, stating that you
have completed a novel everyone else has, modeling choices of books based on
trends in the blogging circles [where the ‘new shiny’ rules, not that I have
anything against it]. It’s easier to blame external forces for this behavior,
but that’s not quite true, because I made all decisions when it came to my own
reviews and blogging. Subsequently, I took stories with dragons and magic to be
simple stories about magic and dragons without thinking further. A friend of
mine once told me that SFF literature is the most potent of all kinds of
genres, because it has layers upon layers to utilize and comment upon our own
reality, better than other genres have. I’m quite proud to say that the man is
a psychologist, erudite and has serious, always active views on everything.
Yesterday, as I
started to read The Weird edited by Ann and Jeff VanderMeer I faced a rather winding
and ornate foreword by Michael Moorcock. I had difficulties catching on to some
of his thoughts and felt lost in the general purpose of the text. The language
barrier rose high as it had back during my school years and I had a choice. Read
it once and try to decipher it on my own in the privacy of the back of my mind
or surrender, grab the dictionary and return to where I began all those years
before in reading in English.
I grabbed the
dictionary. Read the “Foreweird” by Michael Moorcock and the introduction by
the VanderMeers, sat down with a journal for my thoughts, a notebook for the
words that I did not know and Longman’s Dictionary of Contemporary English and
studied. Contrary to what I expected, studying this time around brought immense
pleasure. For obvious reasons, doing anything because you so choose is pleasing
in itself as opposed to forced practice from any educational institution. But
there is more than that. The fact that I chose to return to this text and
re-read with the new words in my mind stimulated my thought process, pushed me
to add something from myself into my opening post for the Weird Wednesday
feature based on the words of Moorcock and the VanderMeers rather than
summarize as I usually happen to do. I think that this is what pro-active
reading is all about, opening to the text and working on how the words can
influence me. Needless to say, this process for me has to be more conscious and
I can’t say for certain if anyone can relate to me. Language is not a tough
barrier to remove. You think you know it, but then it surprises you.
In short, I’m
leveling up, which is quite due, seeing as I’m in my twenties already and time
is not waiting for anyone.
I think I went
overboard with this post and I doubt anyone has hung long enough to make any
comments, but I’d like to hear from you about your adventures in reading. How
has your act of reading changed given any given circumstances?
