Jill Thomas is a rambler, traveler, and storyteller with a big laugh who believes life takes her where she needs to go, no matter the roundabout path.
The first novel read to me was Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White and I wept when Charlotte died, leaving her babies to entertain Wilbur who, thanks to Charlotte’s literary creativity, would live on.
The first book I finished on my own was The Trumpet of the Swan. Sam Beaver’s affection for the lovelorn mute swan officially launched my love of reading. The E.B. White book set was given to me for Christmas. I can still visualize the box and the illustrations on book jackets.
When I was a kid I would read while walking down the sidewalk, sometimes bumping into people and telephone poles. My favorite day in elementary school was Thursday because that was when my class went to the library. I was enchanted by the rarified atmosphere and the book smell. I adored library stacks and and running my fingers along the book spines, feeling so excited by the anticipation of finding the newest Ramona the Pest or Harriet the Spy.
My lust for libraries lasted throughout my school years and into adulthood. In high school, my friends and I often congregated on the fifth floor of the downtown Toronto Reference Library.
As an undergraduate, I smoked cigarettes at the 1st-floor study tables at the massive concrete D.B. Weldon Library at the University of Western Ontario. As a grad student, I frequented the gloomy study carols in the dusty stacks at the University of Toronto and the below-ground book dungeons at the University of British Columbia.
And throughout it all, I collected books. Between the ages of nineteen and thirty, I moved houses dozens of times, sometimes traversing from one side of Canada to the other, every time hauling dozens of heavy boxes full of childhood books, favorite novels, and texts with lofty academic titles I would probably never read.
Decades later, I read Charlotte’s Web to my kids. When we started the last chapter, I warned them to brace for heartbreak, and when Charlotte died I cried (again) but the kids were stoic. They’d seen too many movies, with heartbreak and dramatic deaths, to be moved by a spider. Nonetheless, we kept reading. For me, rereading my favorite children’s books, and finding new ones, was one of the best pleasures of being a parent.
Then in 2009, I signed up for Facebook and immediately, passionately, and absolutely fell in love with the interactive internet. I launched a blog and started a new career in digital marketing. I was, and still am, addicted. In 2016, I realized I had not read a book in six years. I read more words every day than I ever have, but none of these words are printed on paper.
With so much content so easily accessible how can one resist? Ted Talks, Podcasts, blogs, and social media. I lie in bed, phone in my hand, scrolling and clicking, flitting from one idea to the next. Apparently, I’m not alone. Pew Research Center reports that book reading is declining (a lot).
The negative consequences of my internet addiction are becoming more obvious as the years pass. I am ever more fixated on dopamine hits of distraction. I find it increasingly difficult to be mindful. I have the attention span of a squirrel. I find it strenuous to sit through a movie and difficult to read a blog article to the end. Fake news sites, clickbait, and trolls make me anxious. I find it difficult to resist comparing my life with others.
Yet, I’m still a big fan of the internet, fake news and Russian trolls aside. I believe it is and will continue to make, the world a better place. It gives the power of story and the world of information to everyone.
Injustices go viral and social movements rise up to react to them. Transformative education experiences are universally accessible to students with limited means. It’s harder for bad people to do bad things without getting caught. It is easier to keep up with far off friends and most importantly cat videos are a constant pleasure.
However, I do think we are fooling ourselves into thinking that intellectual curiosity drives our internet addiction while we are in fact making ourselves dumber. The terrifying, ill-informed and rude public discourse we are all enduring makes a strong case for this.
What is the solution? Maybe it's time for us lapsed bookworms to start reading again. These are some of the reasons I think reading is good.
For starters, good stories expose us to new ideas and different world views in the most accessible way. Fiction takes us to places, real or imagined, we cannot get to any other way. Books and the stories they contain, enable us to form emotional connections with and have empathy for people who are unlike us.
Reading is the sole means by which we slip, involuntarily, often helplessly, into another's skin, another's voice, another's soul. -Joyce Carol Oates
Most importantly in this time of fake news and trolls, books make us smarter. Blog articles, tweets, and social media transmit information that is designed to be easy to consume. This content rarely challenges our intellectual capabilities. Just like a constant diet of fast food makes us flabby, so to a constant intake of social media makes our brains lazy.
Even worse, clickbait and 140 character sentences create the false impression that every opinion is equal to all other opinions. Books, on the other hand, compel us to dig deeper. They increase our breadth of knowledge which enables us to differentiate good ideas from bad and discern truth from opinion.
Books also build our vocabulary so we have more words to explain how we feel. They help us relax and dream and stretch our creativity. They expand our understanding of what is possible.
Reading a book forces us to focus. To get the most out of a story, we must fixate on the plot and complete the book. In doing this our brains learn concentration.
I've decided these are are all good reasons to work hard at becoming an active reader once again. For more inspiration I highly recommend Stephen King’s On Writing. I was inspired by his habit of reading seventy-five books a year.
Since 2016 I manage a couple of dozen books most years but I'm still working my way up to voracious.
Now turn off your computer and go read - after you leave your thoughts in a comment below of course.
READ MORE > JT's Tales From The Trail, Rambler Cafe Blog
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