Confessions of an Ex-Bookworm

Rebecca's summer reading woes plus Kent's news that The New Yorker Fiction issue is out led me to discover a delightful essay this week: Salvatore Scibona's "Where I Learned to Read."

There's no twist for me to spoil; it's more or less a personal look at one writer's track to his future as a writer and, importantly, a reader. But as I read, waves of nostalgia (ugh, the cliche!) rolled through my mind--I remembered when reading was fun and magical. I remembered when I was "a bookworm."

Now beside my bed sits my one-year Bible alone--nothing else. Nestled in my still-packed vacation bag is a literary novel of notable critical acclaim I got 7 pages into. On my desk sits the unread 6 or 8 self-help books I ordered over the course of the year to magically transform me into a better teacher, disciple, and time-manager (ha), which I never cracked open.

I have always heard you make time for the things that matter. But I remember a time when I didn't have to "make time" for reading. I am not sure when I stopped reading. Did I lose the "bookworm" bug or was I ever truly a "bookworm" to begin with? Oh you know, the people who would rather be left alone with a book than... well, anything. Maybe you don't have to fit that cliche to be a reader; maybe you don't even have to be a voracious reader to be successful at... whatever it is you pursue. So why do I feel guilty?

These are questions I don't have answers for today. What I do have are some fantastic quotes from the essay that spawned this ramble:

• About the writer's childhood: "The television stayed on day and night, singing like a Siren in the crowded house. 'Come sit by me and die a little,' it said."
• "As long as nobody had assigned the book, I could stick with it. I didn’t know what I was reading. I didn’t really know how to read. Reading messed with my brain in an unaccountable way. It made me happy; or something."
• About working to pay his way through a literary-driven college: "I carried bricks and mortar to rooftops during the summers, but if I hadn’t made time to read the night before, my legs wore out by noon. Even my body needed to read."
• Upon the reading immersion he grew to love in college: "The gravity of the whole thing would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so much fun, and if it hadn’t been such a gift to find my tribe."

What "tribe" do you claim? Are you a "bookworm" or at least the casual reader? However you define yourself, I hope you never outgrow reading. I wish for you the time and inclination to read and enjoy it this summer. Even if it's just the little occasional gem like this essay, I am determined to do better personally. So here's to our "tribe" at Word, helping bring out the "bookworm" in all of us.