Reading

Since moving into my new home I find myself reading more and enjoying the quiet time I have to read. But sadly, for the first time today I found myself drawn to a book, but was mildly ashamed of what I was reading. No I was not reading some sort of romance novel, nor was I reading anime, nor was I reading Wine Spectator, I was reading The Da Vinci Code. I don't fancy myself as a wildly trendy person, I don't own an I-Pod nor do I have the latest sunglasses nor do I spend great amount of time on Myspace (which is the trendy place to blog). I find myself to be an old fashioned type. A guy at work termed me Old World. I like French wine, I enjoy reading, and like having a pipe and going for walks. What does this have to do with reading? Well I also enjoy reading older novels by classic authors. Jules Verne, George Orwell, Aldous Huxley, and others strike my fancy. But this week I have been reading the number one best seller. This novel is even so trendy that it has "Now a major motion picture" stamped on the front. I am mildly ashamed by the cover and the fact that I have not read it yet. I was captivated by the book and even took it out to read while waiting for my bus after work. It is sad that I am ashamed of what I am reading, but since I am I will continue to read it in secret, or with the cover hidden. Why might I be reading such a novel? There are millions of people out there who have read the novel, and have something to say about it. I have chosen to read the book before making any statements regarding the quality, accuracy, and message of such a novel. There has been some rumbling from the conservative Christians regarding some of the premises of the novel, and since I would love to enter into debate about the topic I feel as though I must read the book from cover to cover to find out what Dan Brown is saying. I also just wanted a good read, and it is proving to be a great read.

But why is reading one of my favorite things? Reading is one of my favorite things because it allows me to use my imagination. Now I realize that much of this world is visual and that little is now left to the imagination, I still believe that if we as humans exercise that little part of us that allows us to be kids again and to see things in the minds eye for the first time. There is an aspect of escape contained within the pages of a novel, there is a chance to escape to someplace that perhaps already exists, but perhaps you create the way the clouds look rather then the way the church looks. Perhaps one of my fondest childhood memories is laying down with my siblings around the speaker while my parents were sitting in the kitchen having tea or watching us, and listening to Adventures in Odyssey, on cassette tape, and creating what the characters looked like and how Whits end was situated on the park and what Bart Rathbone's sneer looked like. I remember using AIO to estimate how long a roadtrip would be, and how many tapes it would take to get there. Edmonton was only 3 tapes away from Calgary. When the AIO animated features came out I was disappointed since the characters looked nothing like I had imagined. This same principle is true when I read something. I find that once I have the mental image of the way something looks then it is hard to breakaway and follow a new image. Its hard to actually watch a film that I have already watched in my mind, granted if the film is done well then sometimes I adopt those images alongside my already created image. All this to say that Reading is one of the most powerful exercises I find useful for my mind. It enlightens, it aids in sleeping and sometimes, when its popular and pop-culture, it makes me ashamed to be caught reading it.