Mandy Brown
On reading, not reading, and reading for indexing
In response
to Pierre Bayard's
How to Talk About Books You Haven't Read,
Mandy Brown writes:
One of Bayard's arguments in How to Talk About Books is that the difference between reading and not reading is hard to pinpoint. If I only skim a book, does that count as reading or not reading? If I read a book years ago, but can no longer remember it, isn't that more akin to a state of not reading than of reading? Or, what if I have never opened a particular book, but can still speak about it authoritatively, because I know what other books it is similar to (or, put another way, I know its location in the library and what it means to be in that place) – is that a book that I have read, or a book that I have not read? Does it matter?
Someone with whom I spend a great deal of time is a significantly less avid reader than I am. Our arrangement is such that I read vigorously – making numerous recommendations about which books he should read – wherein he reads about one out of every dozen or so books I push in his direction. And yet a strange consequence of this coupling is that he can speak as authoritatively and compellingly as I can about books of which he has never so much as cracked the spine. It's as if I'm reading for two, and the act of reading expands from the initial contact (me, alone, with book in hand) to the later event (the two of us, talking about books, drinking wine). In a certain sense, he has read these books, in that he is as familiar with them (albeit through different means) as I am.
Underneath this theory of reading is an elevation of the ideas that a book espouses over the experience of reading it. The challenge I see therein is that ideas cannot be completely decoupled from the act of reading – cannot escape the material condition of the written language from which they are born. For me, especially, an idea must be judged in part on the merits of the words that describe it. The best ideas are therefore married to the most beautiful language; a divorce diminishes them both.
As indexers, we do more reading than the average soul, and yet, how much do we really absorb? I have noticed that when the material is technical, I absorb and keep nearly none of it within a month. But I do retain some - when our water purifier was behaving oddly, all the plumbing engineering indexing I have done led me to conclude it was a pressure issue, and lo and behold, it was. It didn't mean I could fix it, though! I retained the theory, but I didn't have the know-how, most likely because the engineering work I do contains formulas and applications in the broad sense, not specific valve issues under the sink.
When the material is fiction, the book itself dictates how much I retain, whether I got involved, lost myself, or got bored easily. But when the book is read with my book club, no matter what genre, I come away with a sense of owning it, it becomes a special book due to the act of sharing, and I retain all of those. The interaction and sharing of a book seems to mean I get to "keep" it.
When my indexing material is anthropological, historical, natural history, botany, biographical, or in other words very directly related to humans or nature, I retain a lot of it. Perhaps because it links into my experiences as a human, and whether I share it or not doesn't matter?
I'm wondering how the rest of you feel. How much do you retain? Is there a subject that stays with you longer?
One of Bayard's arguments in How to Talk About Books is that the difference between reading and not reading is hard to pinpoint. If I only skim a book, does that count as reading or not reading? If I read a book years ago, but can no longer remember it, isn't that more akin to a state of not reading than of reading? Or, what if I have never opened a particular book, but can still speak about it authoritatively, because I know what other books it is similar to (or, put another way, I know its location in the library and what it means to be in that place) – is that a book that I have read, or a book that I have not read? Does it matter?
Someone with whom I spend a great deal of time is a significantly less avid reader than I am. Our arrangement is such that I read vigorously – making numerous recommendations about which books he should read – wherein he reads about one out of every dozen or so books I push in his direction. And yet a strange consequence of this coupling is that he can speak as authoritatively and compellingly as I can about books of which he has never so much as cracked the spine. It's as if I'm reading for two, and the act of reading expands from the initial contact (me, alone, with book in hand) to the later event (the two of us, talking about books, drinking wine). In a certain sense, he has read these books, in that he is as familiar with them (albeit through different means) as I am.
Underneath this theory of reading is an elevation of the ideas that a book espouses over the experience of reading it. The challenge I see therein is that ideas cannot be completely decoupled from the act of reading – cannot escape the material condition of the written language from which they are born. For me, especially, an idea must be judged in part on the merits of the words that describe it. The best ideas are therefore married to the most beautiful language; a divorce diminishes them both.
As indexers, we do more reading than the average soul, and yet, how much do we really absorb? I have noticed that when the material is technical, I absorb and keep nearly none of it within a month. But I do retain some - when our water purifier was behaving oddly, all the plumbing engineering indexing I have done led me to conclude it was a pressure issue, and lo and behold, it was. It didn't mean I could fix it, though! I retained the theory, but I didn't have the know-how, most likely because the engineering work I do contains formulas and applications in the broad sense, not specific valve issues under the sink.
When the material is fiction, the book itself dictates how much I retain, whether I got involved, lost myself, or got bored easily. But when the book is read with my book club, no matter what genre, I come away with a sense of owning it, it becomes a special book due to the act of sharing, and I retain all of those. The interaction and sharing of a book seems to mean I get to "keep" it.
When my indexing material is anthropological, historical, natural history, botany, biographical, or in other words very directly related to humans or nature, I retain a lot of it. Perhaps because it links into my experiences as a human, and whether I share it or not doesn't matter?
I'm wondering how the rest of you feel. How much do you retain? Is there a subject that stays with you longer?
Like dying, everyone reads alone
The best
readers are obstinate. They possess a nearly
inexhaustible persistence that drives them to read,
regardless of the circumstances they find themselves
in. I’ve seen a reader absorbed in Don Quixote while
seated at a noisy bar; I’ve witnessed the
quintessential New York reader walk the streets with
a book in hand; of late I’ve seen many a reader
devour books on their iPhone (including one who
confessed to reading the entire Lord of the Rings
trilogy while scrolling with his thumb). And millions
of us read newspapers, magazines, and blogs on our
screens every day—claims that no one reads anymore
notwithstanding.
What each of these readers has in common is an ability to create solitude under circumstances that would seem to prohibit it. Reading is a necessarily solitary experience—like dying, everyone reads alone—but over the centuries readers have learned how to cultivate that solitude, how to grow it in the least hospitable environments. An experienced reader can lose herself in a good text with anything short of a war going on (and, sometimes, even then)—the horticultural equivalent of growing orchids in a desert.
Mandy Brown is a web designer who understands reading behaviors, and deliciously writes about them -- from A List Apart.
What each of these readers has in common is an ability to create solitude under circumstances that would seem to prohibit it. Reading is a necessarily solitary experience—like dying, everyone reads alone—but over the centuries readers have learned how to cultivate that solitude, how to grow it in the least hospitable environments. An experienced reader can lose herself in a good text with anything short of a war going on (and, sometimes, even then)—the horticultural equivalent of growing orchids in a desert.
Mandy Brown is a web designer who understands reading behaviors, and deliciously writes about them -- from A List Apart.