Ever since I started learning to read as a child, I have loved it. I read voraciously as a child, and throughout my life, I’ve always enjoyed reading and have done it for leisure. Sometimes as a kid, I read because I had nothing else to do; when I was young, my parents never enrolled me in any activities, so I’d just be stuck at home during school breaks and summers. I’d end up reading whatever I could get my hands on. Sometimes, that included home remedy and house repair books. Other times, it included gardening and cookbooks. But even when I did start getting out of the house more, I always, always enjoyed my quiet time reading. When we read, we are able to whisk ourselves away from our current place and time and fully immerse ourselves in the stories, times, and lands where the book’s story takes place. We are able to learn and see through another person’s eyes, and thus, are likely to be more empathetic and understanding of different people’s experiences. Reading broadens our scope of knowledge and exposes us to different aspects of the human experience that we may never have the opportunity to get exposed to, for better or worse. I’d like to think this makes us more capable of deeper feelings. While reading the very best and complex novels, it can feel like a bit of time travel. As the physician/novelist Abraham Verghese says, “You suspend disbelief, and you live through centuries, sometimes, or at least decades, (…) births and deaths, and you put the book down and it’s still Tuesday.”
On top of adding to one’s knowledge of the world, increasing empathy, and just being a form of entertainment and even “time travel,” in its most basic sense, reading helps to improve critical thinking, vocabulary, grammar/sentence structure, and can even help with stress relief. It’s also been linked to helping with preventing dementia/Alzheimer’s Disease. So given this, it’s been really strange and unsettling to hear that to this day, Chris’s dad thinks reading books is not a good use of time, and even mocks his mother for being an avid reader. Apparently, he “learned” this disdain from his own mother, Chris’s Nana, who always thought that a woman’s place was in the home to take care of the household and children, and to never do anything else. She used to mock Chris’s mom’s love of books and tell Chris’s dad to get her to stop. They both failed in this endeavor (thankfully). Chris’s dad has often times made disparaging comments about Chris’s mom’s love of reading, saying things like, “She must get these crazy ideas through the stories she reads!”
Given we’re in the year 2025, Chris’s parents are in their late 60s/early 70s, and Chris’s mom is a medical doctor, this disdain for reading books is quite a primeval and unenlightened idea to have. I never would have thought I would meet someone in my lifetime who would disparage reading books of all things, but alas, the person ended up coming right under my nose in my own father-in-law, someone who has grown up in great wealth, comfort, and access to education and knowledge. I was reminded of this negative opinion while finishing The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese this week. It’s a long, long book (over 700 pages) that spans three generations of a family and two continents, but along with Verghese’s Cutting for Stone, it’s likely one of my all-time favorite books I’ve ever read. I love the character development, the interwoven stories of multiple families across countries, and how they all came together. I love the imagery of water and how it brings us together yet divides us, and I even loved all the medical details and how they came to life for me right on the page. Every time I picked up the book, I knew I was in love with it because it would literally feel like I was escaping reality and being transported to another place while I was reading it. While both of Verghese’s novels are rumored to be in film production, like pretty much every time I have seen any book I have read become a movie, it’s never the same. The richness of character development and locations is never quite there. The subtlety of speech and body language always falls far short in a movie than on a page. I have rarely rooted for any character in a movie the way I have rooted for a character in a book.
Coincidentally, and it’s really no shock, most of the people I’ve liked and have enjoyed company with in my adult life are readers. They read fiction and nonfiction, and they love sharing what books they are enjoying (or not enjoying). Readers are the very best kind of people. I don’t think that’s really a debatable point.
