Humiliating Confession

Nicholas Carr wrote a book this year called The Shallows, about how the Internet is supposedly ruining our brains. I've been pretty skeptical. And I always read these articles about how people don’t read as much anymore because of the Internet, and I dismiss them as an overblown reaction to technology, because I tend to think technology is good.

However: I spend too much time online, and I don’t read that much. Like, less than a book a month.

There’s hardly anything that I mind admitting publicly; a lot of us get into writing just so that we can admit things publicly. But this one’s pretty embarrassing. I like to think of myself as someone who loves books.

I was raised to be a reader and as a kid, I read at every possible opportunity. I would read anything. Young adult books and fantasy paperbacks, by the hundreds, but also: the magazine published by my dad’s union, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers. A self-help book by Dr. Wayne Dyer. The Oxford Book of English Verse. The Encyclopedia Brittanica.

As summer winds up, I remember how every year I would be a part of the summer reading program at the library (later, as a teen at my first job, I helped run it.) Kids would see how many books they could read in the summer. I would get frustrated because you could only check out 15 at a time, and we only got taken to the library once or twice a week. Still, it would make me so happy to come home with a big armload of books--all smelling like the Scotch tape that held the clear plastic wrap over their covers--and to try to decide which to dive into first.

For the last, I don't know, 5 or 6 years?, I've been an infrequent reader. Of course, when I'm online, I'm reading words, but it's usually chatter. Sometimes it's just garbage.

And I'm feeling it. I can't keep creating or even daydreaming forever when I'm not reading much. It's like trying to work out without water. And I can't figure out why I would neglect something that I like so much.

My husband has been reading a ton in the past few months. He sits on the couch overlooking the backyard and reads contemporary novels, history books, young adult novels, poetry. And I'm thinking about how nice it would be to read and read and read some more.

So since it's almost September, I have this idea (because I'm a nerd) of designing a few "courses" for myself for the "fall semester": a few reading lists. Contemporary American Poetry. Classic English Literature. Chinese and Japanese Poetry. World History. Trends in Romance Subgenres. Popular Science. Not all of those--I'll pick a few of them.

And all of this is making me think of a poem I like by James Schuyler. This is the kind of fall I want to have. (Although, I might do some of my reading on my iPhone with the Kindle app.)

October

Books litter the bed,
leaves the lawn. It
lightly rains. Fall has
come: unpatterned, in
the shedding leaves.

The maples ripen. Apples
come home crisp in bags.
This pear tastes good.
It rains lightly on the
random leaf patterns.

The nimbus is spread
above our island. Rain
lightly patters on un-
shed leaves. The books
of fall litter the bed.