Today (Thursday 23rd January) is National Reading Day.
As an only child, with a long-hours-at-work father and a mostly disinterested mother, growing up without a car in a rural village, reading was my first "hobby", and one that has endured through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to still be a core part of my life as I approach 40.
In recent years, the way I read has been forced to change. Sight loss means I struggle to read for long periods - where I used to regularly read an entire book in a single evening, even well into my early thirties, I now struggle to get through a chapter before my vision starts to blur and grey out, I get a headache and nausea, and I have to set the book aside.
I've never got on with e-readers, although I'm getting better at being able to engage with PDFs, and the increasing number of people who are "publishing", a chapter at a time, to their own blogs - I can adjust the screen magnification and contrast to help me actually see the text comfortably, and, if I'm really struggling, but really keen to see "what happens next", I can use an online screenreader.
The use of screenreaders brings me nicely on to that most controversial aspect of book-life; audiobooks.
"Stop with this nonsense! It's not reading! I don't care if that hurts your feelings because you have dyslexia, or whatever! It just isn't!!! It engages a different part of the brain!!!"
I'm sure you've seen very similar (or maybe the exact same) diatribes on social media whenever audiobooks are mentioned. Personally, whenever someone without a neurology background that is underpinned by a medical degree starts yapping about "parts of the brain", I immediately assume what they're actually thinking is "it's an inferior way to spend your time! I am morally superior, because I work harder at engaging with literature!" Sir...Ma'am...Good Companion... we're not at school now. This isn't going to result in housepoints. No one is giving out merit badges. We're all just doing this for fun - you know, the thing you shouldn't have to work hard at?
Originally, everyone engaged with stories by listening to them. We'd sit round campfires, crafting simple wooden bowls and flint tools, and tell stories to help us understand the world, and our place in it, to teach our children the norms and values of the tribe they'd been born into, to introduce our tribe to the betrothed of one of our own who came from another tribe, and to learn about their tribe from the stories they told.
That was the beginning of the underpinning truth of all engagement with stories, whether you directly read, or read through listening; you can't interrupt a well-told story. It takes you hostage, compels you to just be still, to hear it out, to wait until the end, when your questions are answered.
A well-told story gets into your head. And yes, a well-told story can be an audio recording. It can be a stage play. It can be a television programme. Or it can be a book.
The point is about sitting with someone else's view of the world, and their place in it, and not interrupting with your own. The point is listening - whether directly, or through reading - to understand and engage, rather than, as we all too often do, 'listening' for our turn to talk.
Reading isn't about books.
Reading is about a process in which we willingly set ourselves aside, hold our opinions and objections, and open our minds to someone else's perspective.
If you're engaging with that process, your brain is connected to "reading."
For example, I don't talk about "reading" non-fiction books; I talk instead about "studying" them, or "exploring" - because my non-fiction books include a lot of marginalia, aggressive underscoring, and grammatical "WTF?! Are you completely insane?!" symbology. I am not quiet and patient with non-fiction; I engage with non-fiction in order to have an intellectual argument, to challenge myself, or to see if I am competent to challenge another. Non-fiction is not part of my restive, reflective practice, unless it comes in the form of autobiography (which, interestingly, I rarely read - I'm not really interested in people in the "I was born, I grew up..." sense; I'm interested in how people think, how they engage with the changing world around them, not the mere facts of their existence.)
The "mandatory school activity" that is many peoples' first encounter with reading is, I feel, why so many adults don't read, and so many of those who do are furiously insistent that it is completely different, actually! to engaging with the process through audiobooks. School didn't let us listen to audiobooks, so audiobooks can't count!
Well, originally, authors and publishers didn't give you books you could change the font or adjust the contrast on. Originally, if you intended to read a book a day on a two week holiday, you had to pack 14 individual books.
Now we have e-readers, and downloadable PDF books, we have blogs that we read, and peoples' social media posts.
"But you're still having to use your eyes! It's still reading!" - you're making the presentation comfortable for you. You're altering the form to suit your preferences. How is that any different to someone who finds it more comfortable to engage with the cognitive processes that underpin reading via audiobooks?
"Of course, Braille is different! Braille is still reading, absolutely, but audiobooks are not!"
How are audiobooks not an engagement with the reading process, but Braille is? Apparently, audiobooks "don't count" because the person "isn't using their eyes" - neither is the person reading Braille. We've come to understand that, although it's not technically "reading", by the dictionary definition, Braille is an adaptive way for people to engage with the processes that underpin reading, and therefore should be talked about in the same way. One day, we'll talk about someone "reading" an audiobook, the same way as we "watch" a TV programme - but we wouldn't actually gain much insight if we just watched it; we have to listen to it, too.
If you just read a printed book of Shakespeare's plays, it all feels a bit distant. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's hard to see what all the fuss is about, honestly. But watch the same play, either on stage or on television, and, even if the original language is retained, it suddenly comes alive. It starts to relate to your modern life. Plays are not written to be simply read in their script form; they're written to be engaged with by watching and listening. The dynamics of movement, blocking, and choreography, all contribute to the process. And yet so many teachers still insist that there is a "necessary rigour", a level of moral superiority and greater intellect, demonstrated by "just reading" Shakespeare's plays.
And yes, of course, if people are actually able to see printed or written text, it's helpful for them if they're able to make sense of it - to "read" it.
After all, if people were just told "it's okay, you don't need to learn to read if you find it difficult and stressful", a whole lot of people wouldn't ever be able to drive safely outside their immediate, very familiar area; they wouldn't be able to read lane closure notifications on LED lane displays, they wouldn't be able to identify their destination on boards directing vehicles off a roundabout, they wouldn't be able to follow any directions that relied on being able to read street or town names from signs.
They wouldn't be able to vote, because they would be unable to read the candidates' names on the ballot paper. (This is actually a currently contentious issue, around how blind and visually impaired people are supported to vote - because support that still enables a private ballot isn't routinely available in English polling stations.)
People would struggle to access employment, because the days of just walking into a business, asking to speak to "someone in charge", and asking if they have a job, are long gone. Indeed, a lot of people who, thirty years ago, when they were in their twenties or younger, were told they "didn't have to worry about computers if you don't really 'get it'" are now really struggling to gain employment, or to change jobs, because, actually, knowing at least the basics of how to send emails, including with attachments, how to set up a basic Excel database, how to use Outlook, and how to produce text-and-graphic reports, is...pretty much essential in most jobs, with even "hands-on" jobs, such as construction and farming, having their own computerised elements. Gen Z are struggling in offices not because they don't know how to use tech, but because they've never been taught to actually type - everything has always been touch-screen, and simplified to an almost childish level, leaving many of them even more bewildered by Excel than most of us are. (I used to be okay with Excel. Now? I can't actually see it in any way that allows me to make any sense of it, and screenreaders hate it. Including Microsoft's own native screenreader...)
If you're comfortable reading, computers are easy.
Once you can read, typing follows on very naturally.
But, again, that leads us to an important point: "You can't say listening to audiobooks is reading!" - so how is it that you can say you're "writing" a book, letter, or report, when you're actually "typing" it? (Or, these days, getting ChatGPT to produce it for you...) If you can't physically write something other people can read, surely that is to be disdained? I can write in cursive, although I can only read cursive written recently, with a thick pen. (Berol handwriting pens, in black, are ideal for me.) I have to really slow things down, and make an effort, if I need my cursive writing to be legible to others.
The answer, of course, is that people who attack and criticise others are often living in the mists of cognitive dissonance. It is fine for them to say they are "writing" a report, when they're actually asking ChatGPT to produce it for them, or, at best, typing it, because that is just "a shift in colloquial understanding of language, it's not a different process!" (Except, certainly asking ChatGPT to produce your report is, and handwriting requires greater concentration than typing, for most people...)
Most people who listen to audiobooks also read physical books.
Most people who use ChatGPT view creating any typewritten document entirely through their own efforts to be the most heinous suggestion ever put before them. Many people these days will type everything, including their shopping lists.
"But audiobooks are just a lazy cop-out!" - and typing and ChatGPT aren't?! Most people who type/use ChatGPT are more than capable of writing by hand; they just prefer not to.
Many people who exclusively engage with literature via audiobooks do so because printed documents are inaccessible to them, owing to visual impairment, dyslexia, or other conditions. Personally, it matters more to me that as many people as possible engage with reading as a process, rather than reading as an action, even if that means they engage via audiobooks, rather than that people believe they "just don't like" reading, because they struggle to access physical books.
I'm trying to get into audiobooks, because I'm slowly coming to accept that what little is left of my sight is probably going to be gone within the next 10yrs, meaning that, if I cling to physical books, I'll lose reading altogether. However, I do struggle with audiobooks; I'm very sensitive to whether a voice is "right", and there's a lot of absolutely abysmal audiobook narration out there! Especially if I've already read the print book, and have an idea in my head of how the characters sound, the "wrong" audiobook narration can absolutely shut down any ability for me to engage.
An example of narration that, for me, is absolutely spot on is Aoife McMahon's narration of Marian Keyes' The Woman Who Stole My Life. She sounds exactly the way Marian Keyes' characters do in my head when I read the print books. (Yes, character-driven fiction written by and predominantly about women is one of my surprising enjoyments...)
So; with "Yes, audiobooks count as 'reading', because reading is a process, not an act" settled... What am I reading on National Reading Day?
I'm currently not "reading" anything - but I am exploring Mark C. Taylor's The Moment of Complexity - remember I discussed why I don't consider that I "read" non-fiction?
The most recent book I read was The Dream Job by J.M Hewitt - a major plot hole at the end, in my opinion (no spoilers!), but I'm not the one with a published book available for random people to buy, so what do I know? (And working out how things end is the most common problem all of us have, if we're honest.)
In the next week, I'll be pre-ordering Ben Aaronovitch's latest novel from the Rivers of London series, Stone and Sky, having enjoyed the series, after finding the first novel in a charity shop (which is where I find most of my books...), and will be reading that once it's published and delivered.
Favourite book... that's a list that is always open to being added to, but currently the slot is held by Geoff Dyer's The Colour of Memory.
What about you? What books are in your hands, and in your brain?
As an only child, with a long-hours-at-work father and a mostly disinterested mother, growing up without a car in a rural village, reading was my first "hobby", and one that has endured through the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, to still be a core part of my life as I approach 40.
In recent years, the way I read has been forced to change. Sight loss means I struggle to read for long periods - where I used to regularly read an entire book in a single evening, even well into my early thirties, I now struggle to get through a chapter before my vision starts to blur and grey out, I get a headache and nausea, and I have to set the book aside.
I've never got on with e-readers, although I'm getting better at being able to engage with PDFs, and the increasing number of people who are "publishing", a chapter at a time, to their own blogs - I can adjust the screen magnification and contrast to help me actually see the text comfortably, and, if I'm really struggling, but really keen to see "what happens next", I can use an online screenreader.
The use of screenreaders brings me nicely on to that most controversial aspect of book-life; audiobooks.
"Stop with this nonsense! It's not reading! I don't care if that hurts your feelings because you have dyslexia, or whatever! It just isn't!!! It engages a different part of the brain!!!"
I'm sure you've seen very similar (or maybe the exact same) diatribes on social media whenever audiobooks are mentioned. Personally, whenever someone without a neurology background that is underpinned by a medical degree starts yapping about "parts of the brain", I immediately assume what they're actually thinking is "it's an inferior way to spend your time! I am morally superior, because I work harder at engaging with literature!" Sir...Ma'am...Good Companion... we're not at school now. This isn't going to result in housepoints. No one is giving out merit badges. We're all just doing this for fun - you know, the thing you shouldn't have to work hard at?
Originally, everyone engaged with stories by listening to them. We'd sit round campfires, crafting simple wooden bowls and flint tools, and tell stories to help us understand the world, and our place in it, to teach our children the norms and values of the tribe they'd been born into, to introduce our tribe to the betrothed of one of our own who came from another tribe, and to learn about their tribe from the stories they told.
That was the beginning of the underpinning truth of all engagement with stories, whether you directly read, or read through listening; you can't interrupt a well-told story. It takes you hostage, compels you to just be still, to hear it out, to wait until the end, when your questions are answered.
A well-told story gets into your head. And yes, a well-told story can be an audio recording. It can be a stage play. It can be a television programme. Or it can be a book.
The point is about sitting with someone else's view of the world, and their place in it, and not interrupting with your own. The point is listening - whether directly, or through reading - to understand and engage, rather than, as we all too often do, 'listening' for our turn to talk.
Reading isn't about books.
Reading is about a process in which we willingly set ourselves aside, hold our opinions and objections, and open our minds to someone else's perspective.
If you're engaging with that process, your brain is connected to "reading."
For example, I don't talk about "reading" non-fiction books; I talk instead about "studying" them, or "exploring" - because my non-fiction books include a lot of marginalia, aggressive underscoring, and grammatical "WTF?! Are you completely insane?!" symbology. I am not quiet and patient with non-fiction; I engage with non-fiction in order to have an intellectual argument, to challenge myself, or to see if I am competent to challenge another. Non-fiction is not part of my restive, reflective practice, unless it comes in the form of autobiography (which, interestingly, I rarely read - I'm not really interested in people in the "I was born, I grew up..." sense; I'm interested in how people think, how they engage with the changing world around them, not the mere facts of their existence.)
The "mandatory school activity" that is many peoples' first encounter with reading is, I feel, why so many adults don't read, and so many of those who do are furiously insistent that it is completely different, actually! to engaging with the process through audiobooks. School didn't let us listen to audiobooks, so audiobooks can't count!
Well, originally, authors and publishers didn't give you books you could change the font or adjust the contrast on. Originally, if you intended to read a book a day on a two week holiday, you had to pack 14 individual books.
Now we have e-readers, and downloadable PDF books, we have blogs that we read, and peoples' social media posts.
"But you're still having to use your eyes! It's still reading!" - you're making the presentation comfortable for you. You're altering the form to suit your preferences. How is that any different to someone who finds it more comfortable to engage with the cognitive processes that underpin reading via audiobooks?
"Of course, Braille is different! Braille is still reading, absolutely, but audiobooks are not!"
How are audiobooks not an engagement with the reading process, but Braille is? Apparently, audiobooks "don't count" because the person "isn't using their eyes" - neither is the person reading Braille. We've come to understand that, although it's not technically "reading", by the dictionary definition, Braille is an adaptive way for people to engage with the processes that underpin reading, and therefore should be talked about in the same way. One day, we'll talk about someone "reading" an audiobook, the same way as we "watch" a TV programme - but we wouldn't actually gain much insight if we just watched it; we have to listen to it, too.
If you just read a printed book of Shakespeare's plays, it all feels a bit distant. It doesn't make a lot of sense. It's hard to see what all the fuss is about, honestly. But watch the same play, either on stage or on television, and, even if the original language is retained, it suddenly comes alive. It starts to relate to your modern life. Plays are not written to be simply read in their script form; they're written to be engaged with by watching and listening. The dynamics of movement, blocking, and choreography, all contribute to the process. And yet so many teachers still insist that there is a "necessary rigour", a level of moral superiority and greater intellect, demonstrated by "just reading" Shakespeare's plays.
And yes, of course, if people are actually able to see printed or written text, it's helpful for them if they're able to make sense of it - to "read" it.
After all, if people were just told "it's okay, you don't need to learn to read if you find it difficult and stressful", a whole lot of people wouldn't ever be able to drive safely outside their immediate, very familiar area; they wouldn't be able to read lane closure notifications on LED lane displays, they wouldn't be able to identify their destination on boards directing vehicles off a roundabout, they wouldn't be able to follow any directions that relied on being able to read street or town names from signs.
They wouldn't be able to vote, because they would be unable to read the candidates' names on the ballot paper. (This is actually a currently contentious issue, around how blind and visually impaired people are supported to vote - because support that still enables a private ballot isn't routinely available in English polling stations.)
People would struggle to access employment, because the days of just walking into a business, asking to speak to "someone in charge", and asking if they have a job, are long gone. Indeed, a lot of people who, thirty years ago, when they were in their twenties or younger, were told they "didn't have to worry about computers if you don't really 'get it'" are now really struggling to gain employment, or to change jobs, because, actually, knowing at least the basics of how to send emails, including with attachments, how to set up a basic Excel database, how to use Outlook, and how to produce text-and-graphic reports, is...pretty much essential in most jobs, with even "hands-on" jobs, such as construction and farming, having their own computerised elements. Gen Z are struggling in offices not because they don't know how to use tech, but because they've never been taught to actually type - everything has always been touch-screen, and simplified to an almost childish level, leaving many of them even more bewildered by Excel than most of us are. (I used to be okay with Excel. Now? I can't actually see it in any way that allows me to make any sense of it, and screenreaders hate it. Including Microsoft's own native screenreader...)
If you're comfortable reading, computers are easy.
Once you can read, typing follows on very naturally.
But, again, that leads us to an important point: "You can't say listening to audiobooks is reading!" - so how is it that you can say you're "writing" a book, letter, or report, when you're actually "typing" it? (Or, these days, getting ChatGPT to produce it for you...) If you can't physically write something other people can read, surely that is to be disdained? I can write in cursive, although I can only read cursive written recently, with a thick pen. (Berol handwriting pens, in black, are ideal for me.) I have to really slow things down, and make an effort, if I need my cursive writing to be legible to others.
The answer, of course, is that people who attack and criticise others are often living in the mists of cognitive dissonance. It is fine for them to say they are "writing" a report, when they're actually asking ChatGPT to produce it for them, or, at best, typing it, because that is just "a shift in colloquial understanding of language, it's not a different process!" (Except, certainly asking ChatGPT to produce your report is, and handwriting requires greater concentration than typing, for most people...)
Most people who listen to audiobooks also read physical books.
Most people who use ChatGPT view creating any typewritten document entirely through their own efforts to be the most heinous suggestion ever put before them. Many people these days will type everything, including their shopping lists.
"But audiobooks are just a lazy cop-out!" - and typing and ChatGPT aren't?! Most people who type/use ChatGPT are more than capable of writing by hand; they just prefer not to.
Many people who exclusively engage with literature via audiobooks do so because printed documents are inaccessible to them, owing to visual impairment, dyslexia, or other conditions. Personally, it matters more to me that as many people as possible engage with reading as a process, rather than reading as an action, even if that means they engage via audiobooks, rather than that people believe they "just don't like" reading, because they struggle to access physical books.
I'm trying to get into audiobooks, because I'm slowly coming to accept that what little is left of my sight is probably going to be gone within the next 10yrs, meaning that, if I cling to physical books, I'll lose reading altogether. However, I do struggle with audiobooks; I'm very sensitive to whether a voice is "right", and there's a lot of absolutely abysmal audiobook narration out there! Especially if I've already read the print book, and have an idea in my head of how the characters sound, the "wrong" audiobook narration can absolutely shut down any ability for me to engage.
An example of narration that, for me, is absolutely spot on is Aoife McMahon's narration of Marian Keyes' The Woman Who Stole My Life. She sounds exactly the way Marian Keyes' characters do in my head when I read the print books. (Yes, character-driven fiction written by and predominantly about women is one of my surprising enjoyments...)
So; with "Yes, audiobooks count as 'reading', because reading is a process, not an act" settled... What am I reading on National Reading Day?
I'm currently not "reading" anything - but I am exploring Mark C. Taylor's The Moment of Complexity - remember I discussed why I don't consider that I "read" non-fiction?
The most recent book I read was The Dream Job by J.M Hewitt - a major plot hole at the end, in my opinion (no spoilers!), but I'm not the one with a published book available for random people to buy, so what do I know? (And working out how things end is the most common problem all of us have, if we're honest.)
In the next week, I'll be pre-ordering Ben Aaronovitch's latest novel from the Rivers of London series, Stone and Sky, having enjoyed the series, after finding the first novel in a charity shop (which is where I find most of my books...), and will be reading that once it's published and delivered.
Favourite book... that's a list that is always open to being added to, but currently the slot is held by Geoff Dyer's The Colour of Memory.
What about you? What books are in your hands, and in your brain?
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