As a child, books were my transport to another world. I could take myself into an adventure and live a life not my own for hours on end. They were an endless source of entertainment and education.
In growing up, though, I found that when it came to competing with work, school, family and friends, books were left with none of my time.
According to an Associated Press-Ipsos poll, the same is true for a lot of adults in America. The poll states that one in four adults admitted to not reading a single book in the last year.
This is a sad number.
We are a country obsessed with all things electronic. Cell phones, computers, portable music players and the like have been united into super tools that will eventually have to be pried from our cold, dead hands. In our cars, we have replaced conversation with television screens in the back of our headsets.
Our days are so compressed with events that in what may be the one part of the day we could enjoy a chapter or two of a good book, we resort to TVs, DVDs and computers with wireless Internet.
The first time I read Little Women was in a situation where most kids would be watching a movie: a family road trip. Rather than watching television when I got home from school, I spent some time with Tom Sawyer and Alice in Wonderland.
These are classics that my brother, six years my junior, has never seen in print because multiple movie versions were available. I refuse to believe that in the end, watching a movie and reading a book can end up being the same thing — after all, we’ve all seen at least one screen adaptation that has ruined the words of an author.
I know that as a society, we have to progress and adapt to technology. In most cases, these new things make our lives easier. Sometimes we need to get an e-mail on our phone and a movie while you’re bundled up in bed can be nice once in a while. But I can’t help wondering if, in making life so easy, have we become too lazy for the things that make us work for any enjoyment?
Rather than gathering dust on the shelves, books should be considered tools of enjoyment that we are lucky to possess. Not all nations and people can say that they have the ability to even read a book, let alone enjoy it.
When it comes down to it, there are benefits that can be gained from reading a book that are irreplaceable and that need to be appreciated more. We just need to be willing to devote some time to it.
Read.
Read with your children, read outside and read to enjoy it, because you never know when literature may become a lost art.