One of the classiest motivators, something virtually guaranteed to get people to pick up a book, appeared a few years ago.<\/p>\n
It was a several-paneled cartoon which started simply with a kid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beginning to read a book. The second panel showed the child expressing greater interest.<\/p>\n
The third section showed some kind of monster on the page, and the young reader growing fangs, facial hair and claws.<\/p>\n
The exaggerations continued, with the message that by the time the child got well into the book, the child herself had changed. She had become what she was reading.<\/p>\n
The final panel showed everything back to normal. So, what if, during just the short time it takes to read a book, we could become part of it? As I recall, the message read, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Libros te llevar\u00c3\u00a1n\u00e2\u20ac\u009d (Books will transport you, or Books carry you away).<\/p>\n
I saw this transformation occur recently when my son Ben, then 29, cracked open a series of books on mountain climbing. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Into Thin Air,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Jon Krakauer was one in the collection. And Ben pored through volumes of National Geographic to bone up on other accounts of dare-devil climbs.<\/p>\n
I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t know (and I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not sure he knows) whether the reading was done in anticipation of climbs he himself would attempt. Sure enough, earlier this year he flew to Washington State to climb Mount Rainier, his first such effort, which he completed along with several trained climbers.<\/p>\n
Then he completed an even bigger challenge: On his 30th birthday, he climbed Mont Blanc in France. He\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d arrived in France the day before and says he slept not a wink before beginning the 15,700-ft climb, his not having recovered from eight hours of jet lag.<\/p>\n
But this item is more about reading than climbing. My ability to read and comprehend must have been retarded because of the approach we used at Immaculate Conception School.
\nEspecially in the elementary grades, the emphasis was in reading aloud, and, I suspect, we de-emphasized content. What were we reading, and how well did we understand it?<\/p>\n
As a result, some of us went through dozens of books without any of the books going through us. Much later, as I needed to read copiously in college, I developed an ability to become part of whatever I was reading, especially if it were a novel. Obviously, the more one reads, the more the pace quickens, and we remember more of it not by taking weeks to finish a book but in going through it faster and not allowing key elements to fade.<\/p>\n
Granted, that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what reading\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about: People write novels in order to get people involved in the plot and the characters. My problem has been never really involving myself. For too long, I viewed books as something we needed to read \u00e2\u20ac\u201dsometimes as a punishment \u00e2\u20ac\u201d but it didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t occur to me that identifying with a particular character or sharing the travels, travails and vicissitudes was part of the process.<\/p>\n
I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d read the books Ben selected and invariably found that as the writer described getting frostbite, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d transfer some of the frigid temperatures to myself. I often needed a sweater or a blanket to keep me warm.<\/p>\n
I read the diaries associated with the Donner party, whose 1840 trek across the frigid tundra in the Sierra Nevada resulted in the deaths of many and the survival of few, by means of cannibalism.<\/p>\n
The agony they must have felt affected me. And I needed a space heater to warm me as I read the accounts.<\/p>\n
In reading \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The Jungle,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d by Upton Sinclair, I needed a blanket to get through the chapters that describe the time Jurgis Rudkus needed to burn parts of the floor of his house to keep the family warm. And I shivered through the passages about one of the sons who slipped off the sidewalk into a frozen, slime-filled hole.<\/p>\n
When I shared this auto-cryogenic phenomenon with my family, they didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem impressed. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153The power of suggestion alone is enough to cool you off, Dad,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d one son suggested. But why doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t the opposite effect ever kick in?<\/p>\n
Do I suffer heat prostration in reading about Lawrence of Arabia or of gruelling Saharan horse races such as those in \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Hidalgo\u00e2\u20ac\u009d? It doesn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t seem to work that way. Actually, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve never really tried to force the theory. And that\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s because I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m not a hot-house plant. Any temperature above 75 degrees makes me febrile.<\/p>\n
In addition, reading about someone lost in the Yukon fascinates me. For example, Jack London\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s short story, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Love of Life,\u00e2\u20ac\u009dintrigues me more than some hellish novel in which everyone gets boiled in a cauldron or burned at the stake.<\/p>\n
As a person who prefers cool weather, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m just not curious enough to read about desert travel for fear I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll begin sweating out that book.<\/p>\n
Anyone who reads a book, watches an opera or attends a play or movie can be beset by what the ancients called the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153willing suspension of disbelief.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s the ability to suppress the notion that it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s only a movie (or book or opera or play), and it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s not really happening. Some call it \u00e2\u20ac\u0153verisimilitude.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s a quid pro quo in that we tacitly agree to suspend our judgment in exchange for the promise of some type of stimulation.<\/p>\n
In keeping with my penchant for literal \u00e2\u20ac\u0153chillery,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d I plan to read for the first time \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Dr. Zhivago,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Boris Pasternak\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tome about the 1917 Russian Revolution. So graphic was the 1964 movie \u00e2\u20ac\u201d much of the action taking place in frigid battlefields \u00e2\u20ac\u201d that one shivers.<\/p>\n
Remember the icicles on Omar Sharif\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s and others\u00e2\u20ac\u2122 beards?<\/p>\n
As I attempt to tackle the book, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m hoping some reader will come across with a pair of earmuffs and some gloves \u00e2\u20ac\u201d and maybe a can of compressed aerosol defroster would help too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
One of the classiest motivators, something virtually guaranteed to get people to pick up a book, appeared a few years ago. It was a several-paneled cartoon which started simply with a kid\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s beginning to read a book. The second panel showed the child expressing greater interest. The third section showed some kind of monster on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=297"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/297\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}