Why I Read

Hello there. Hope you're feeling well today.

So the news has come in a few days back that Britons are buying less physical books and are instead watching Netflix and the like as well as TV. The perception in the headline is that people are reading less and watching more.

I've currently has five books on the go (that includes the one I'm reading from the Kindle. You know I don't think avid readers deliberately intend to juggle reading so many books. It just happens) so perhaps being of the apparently dying species I'll give a go as to explaining why I read.

Let's start then by saying this. the sales of physical books are down but those of their upstart digital are up. Personally my views on Kindles (other e readers are available) have evolved. My preference will always be for the quiet pleasure of turning a page but you cannot deny the advantages that the e reader has regarding cost and particularly space. In my head there is now the peaceful coexistence of the two forms of reading books.

As for watching Netflix and other streaming services well I suspect similar comments were made regarding the rise of radio or the TV. Yet reading still survives. The issue really is how people are reading. Not of reading itself.

So we come back to the title of this post. Why I Read. I read because at it's best it allows you to enter worlds that no other medium does. If you're watching a series on TV or a film then the landscape is laid out before you. As you're reading though it's your imagination that has through the writer's words created the world he/she is writing about. Unless corrupted by seeing another media adaptation beforehand what you see is not quite what another reader does.

And not just what you see, what is felt as well. For consistency no other media can make you feel as much as a good book does whether fiction or non fiction. If we take fiction for example the writer's description of a scene or an emotion can take you to places where watching the same scene on the TV could not. Seeing a person cry is not the same as a description of why that person is crying. Talking generally only reading gives you that.The act of reading, as opposed to chatting about it afterwards, is a solitary activity. But unlike say, collections of [insert object here] it has a certain intimacy of the moment.

Or let's take non-fiction. Television cannot take opinion properly. Far better to read a book or an essay. Let the argument into your mind and decide yourself.

What is the bookshop, the library or now the e-bookstore but a world wide web of the mind where you can be entertained and informed seemingly on a one to one basis? I have nothing against Netflix, Amazon Prime, TV etc but their choice is smaller than what books in whatever format can offer you. This would consequently mean that in a Fahrenheit 451 world our choice would be far more regulated. I don't want that. Neither would most readers. Because we think.

Until the next time.