Would someone please ask me what I’m reading!

By Bob Vickrey

December 11, 2013

My longtime writer friend Josh Greenfeld said recently he couldn’t remember the last time someone asked him what he was reading.

He bemoaned the fact that in our present culture the question has become, “What have you seen lately?” Since Greenfeld has written scripts for several movies, including one which was nominated for an academy award, I assumed that he was making a statement about the imbalance we’ve struck in our entertainment priorities. His allegiance has never waivered in his love of books and the treasured art of good storytelling.

Media surveys done in the last decade indicate that movies, television, and the Internet now dominate the way Americans spend their leisure time, and reading seems to have taken a back seat even as the technological revolution has offered more ways to access available reading material.

Last week, someone actually asked me to choose my favorite novel, and I was so taken aback that I had to get past my initial giddiness before I could answer. I emailed the inquirer the following day and offered more information than he likely ever wanted. I listed book titles that filled a full page.
 
The writer Robert Coles once said “Stories fire and inspire the imagination.” He was right. The great writers have helped to unlock us from the shackles of our modest existences and launch us into worlds that may have seemed previously unimaginable. The sheer power of storytelling has always played out best in simple elegant prose. The reader is the one who frames the scene—not a cinematographer or director. Reading is a truly internal experience—a private one, which is not limited to the boundaries and trappings of visual mediums such as television and movies.

Readers expect to feel a connection to the characters in a story and discover how the narrative illuminates the larger world around them. Often, the particular time and place in life when first encountering a book can bring special meaning to the reading experience.

I remember the first time I picked up Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird” several years after it had been released in 1960 and have never forgotten the powerful impact the book left on me. I was still in college at the time, and it was the book which first opened new windows onto the world for me. Those subtle life lessons that the author wove seamlessly into her narrative continued to resonate long after I had finished the book.

I was late getting into the reading game, but fate intervened after college years when I began working in the book publishing business. Henceforth, reading became my lifeline.

I read manuscripts of our company’s forthcoming books and took great pleasure in reading a stack of unbound pages with no book jacket or flap copy. The package offered no hint as to what surprises possibly awaited as I began to read the first line. I read good books which never became famous and a few bad ones that did. However, I always found it terribly satisfying to stumble onto an impressive work which would eventually find a large appreciative audience.

I traveled the Southwest visiting bookstores as a quasi-literary valet as I promoted our stable of writers. There was always a healthy exchange with booksellers who generously shared their latest discovery of a new talent.

I recall Los Angeles bookseller Doug Dutton once greeting me at the front door of his store by handing me the book “Liars Club.” He told me to go sit in the shade of his outdoor patio and read the first 25 pages and then report back to him after I finished. When I returned, I must assume that it was the excited expression on my face that left him with a wide grin conveying his satisfaction in pairing me with Mary Karr’s entertaining memoir.

As I made my way to the parking lot, I spotted an old friend who greeted me with a handshake as I conspicuously flashed the book jacket prominently held in my other hand. Right on cue, I noticed him studying the cover of “Liars Club.” However, to my utter bewilderment, he asked “Did you possibly catch “Saturday Night Live” last night?”

Bob Vickrey’s columns have appeared in several Southwestern newspapers including the Houston Chronicle and the Ft. Worth Star-Telegram. He is a member of the Board of Contributors for the Waco Tribune-Herald and is a regular contributor for the Boryana Books website. He lives in Pacific Palisades, California.