Waiting
for someone at Starbucks a few weeks ago, I ran into someone else I wasn’t
waiting for — in this case a woman who lives at the end of our road with her
husband and three daughters. We’ve known each other for years, mostly on a
wave-or-stop-and-chat-for-a-few-minutes basis.
It
had been a while since I last talked with her, and when she got out of her car,
she came straight over to me to let me know she’d bought my mystery novel The McHenry Inheritance and enjoyed it.
Nothing out of the ordinary so far, but what she said next really hit me.
“I
think that’s probably the first novel I’ve read in more than 20 years,” she
said, “and it reminded me how much fun it is. When I was a kid, we used to go
to the library a couple of times a month and check out a big box full of books and
bring them home to read. I really used to love that, but with a job and a
family, I just haven’t had the time. Reading your book made me want to go out
and read more.”
Lost Pleasures of Childhood
Her
comment brought back some memories for me. I remember my mother taking us to
the Pasadena Public Library on Walnut Street between Fair Oaks and Los Robles
to get books, especially during the summer when school was out. I’d check out a
half dozen at a time and finish them in a week to ten days. The reading habit
has stayed with me through adulthood, perhaps because of the business I was in
(journalism), but I can see how it easily could have slipped away.
Considering
all the things to do now, it’s amazing that anyone reads. It’s something for
which you have to carve out a block of time (unless you’re an exceptional
multi-tasker), and significant blocks of time are hard to come by. It’s harder
yet when you’re getting home late from music lessons or Little League practice.
And it’s so easy to turn on the TV and take in the shows passively.
My
approach to getting reading done is to schedule it for weekends. When I don’t
have to go to work, I can pretty easily finish a book in two days, and do it
around the errands and other obligations I have.
Long Plane Flights and Lazy Days
By
far the best reading situation, though, is a long trip to a place with not much
to do. If I’m going to New York, London, Paris or Venice, there will be little
reading done except in planes and airports.
But
I’ve had some great reading vacations in Bermuda, the Bahamas, the Florida
Keys, Hilton Head and Baja California. Those are trips where there’s enough
time and leisure to read that 800-pager you haven’t gotten around to yet.
Reading several books on a trip like that is almost like being nine years old
and in the Pasadena Public Library again.
Recovering
from a surgery is a great opportunity to get in some serious reading, but I’m
in no hurry to go under the knife again. Still, if it hadn’t been for that
hernia operation in 1979, I probably would never have found the time for George
Eliot’s Middlemarch.
As
a writer, I have a deep respect for those who read regularly and wish there
were more of them. My great fear is that with so many people writing books and
so few reading them, every author will eventually wind up with a personal
reader, sort of like a personal trainer, and not much more. The good news is I
probably won’t live long enough to see it.
