Contest #2: "On The Importance of Reading"

bibliophile_18 · Eligible to vote! Joined: 16 Jul 2008 Posts: 21 Gender:

Visiting other worlds...all from the homes and sickbeds of the children.

How many times have there been kids in the hospital too sick to even go outside in the sunshine? The answer is too many. For some of these children, they are brought games and doctors that care. For the rest, they just lay staring out the window at the world they won't see until they get out. Why should they be deprived of an outdoors they create? No one thinks to bring them books!

If every child in a hospital bed had a book, they would fight on for life and a new experience. That law in America-'No Child Left Behind'- would be unnecessary. The children would be reading and working harder to make the grade. Many colleges would look at the grades of the children who have read against those that played games and did nothing but waste their creativity to decide who would get in.

All children should read, not just hospitalized ones. Doesn't any parent want their child to excel? I know I do, not just for a good college. A better life is lead just from reading a long book than from not touching the wonderful objects that transport people into the unseen-and often times neglected-worlds of the past and future. If the whole of the world's children were to read, these worlds would be cultivated and would, in turn, create more worlds to explore, more doctors to help, more of everything the world needs for everyone to survive the problems that arise from the darkness of corrupt, uncouth and often un-read leaders that show a distrust to the well-read, well guided people whose books and lives show the changes that could be wrought in our dying world.

tarav · Posted: Mon Jul 21, 2008 12:41 pm Post subject:

bibliophile wrote:

hegel1066 · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 12:28 am Post subject: A Personal History of Reading:

"When I get a little money, I buy books; and if any is left I buy food and clothes." - Desiderius Erasmus

For as long as I can remember, I used my library as a refuge from the world around me. Whenever I would get scolded by my parents, or when I would have a bad day at school, I would wonder off to my (then) scant collection of old, well-worn and dog-eared books and take comfort in them. They never said no, they would never refuse to let me open them and caress their cracked spines. They were the constants in a child’s world full of fleeting variables. Then, I drew an explicitly emotional comfort from books. Their tangibility was a great relief to me, the stories inside them, a fleeting pleasure.

I remember being asked what I wanted for Christmas many years, and replying with the name of a book, or a list of books. My parents’ expressions ranged from earnestness to a distant look of vague interest. Some of my first requests were the thrillers of R. L. Stine (the perennial favorite of children); my latest, the complete writings of Edward Gibbon and anything I could get my hands on my Immanuel Wallerstein. How quickly one’s tastes evolve! The years in between have produced a library of no less than five thousand volumes, ranging in subject matter from religion and religious history to philosophy to essays, reference books, technical books on mathematics and science I still have from my days in school, fiction, poetry, drama, history, sociology, biographies (and these are listed alphabetically according to subjects last name) of everyone from Niels Abel (the woefully forgotten Norwegian mathematician) to Zapata.

In these books, which, in a tribble-like fashion, have come to occupy a more than inordinate space of my apartment, I find worlds and ideas I would have never been exposed to before. I can hold my up dusty, moth-eaten copy of Edith Hamilton and feel confident in saying that I know Zeus, or at least have had my share of interesting inner dialogues with him. I know both the anguish and despair – and also the happiness – of Dorothea Brooke when her scholarly husband Mr. Casaubon dies. I feel the tremendous pathos and expansive despair in work of Milan Kundera, whose sparse novels belie an unsettling finitude. I smile ponderously over my austere ancient historians, looking so haughty in their leather covers – there is Tacitus, there Polybius, there Herodotus, there Cassiodorus. Their histories are full of such a moral force and drive the likes of which are rare in contemporary history. The idea that the history of Rome could possibly serve as much as a bestiary as a collection of Aesop has been called gauche, quaint.

Why I do I read? Why do I find it important? In years past, I would have said, “I read so the books will keep me company” and, later, “to learn more about the world.” Now? All I can say is this: I am human, and to be human is to make connections – connections with the past, and with all possible futures. This is my humble duty as a citizen of the world. I will never reach the end, and never hope to.

-John (hegel1066)

Chris OConnor · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:40 am Post subject:

Amazing job. What a pleasure to read.

ayemea · Almost a regular Joined: 14 Jul 2008 Posts: 33 Gender:

Wow!
Could I write any more to make obvious how much I enjoyed reading this essay?

Ophelia · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 6:48 am Post subject:

Thank you John, and welcome to Booktalk! Smile

hegel1066 · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 8:35 am Post subject:

What an apropos quote to pull up when considering the importance of reading, Ophelia. Balzac really helped me along as I wrote my essay. I have a good part of "Commedie Humaine" heaped in piles on my writing desk.

Thank you for your gracious welcome.

tarav · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 10:33 am Post subject:

Thank you for entering the contest, hegel1066! I can feel your passion for reading.

bibliophile_18 · Eligible to vote! Joined: 16 Jul 2008 Posts: 21 Gender:

Wow! Not only does your essay have power, it holds truth! If you need a good book that shows Hollywood from the point of view of the script-writer, try The Other Woman. I can't recall the author's name, but it is very good and it shows how going off to Hollywood affected the marriage of the writer and her standing among her three children. In all, it's a very good book and your essay is amazing. Weclome to Booktalk and I sincerely hope that you don't let your passion for books fade away ever.

Chris OConnor · Posted: Fri Jul 25, 2008 1:34 pm Post subject:

I actually met the author of "The Other Woman" less than a year ago. But it might not be the same book.

http://www.amazon.com/Other-Woman-Novel-Suspense/dp/0312352174

Even though the author of this book shows as Diana Diamond the real author is a very nice gentleman named William Kennedy. He decided years ago that he would be more successful with his style of books if he used a female name. And he was right.

I'm a Realtor and I do mobile closings too. This is how I met William Kennedy and his wife. I did the signing for their refinance loan.


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