Reading

 

Turn off your electronic devices. I’ll wait.

Now with all of this free time on your hands and none of the visual and oratorical distractions, find a nice soft chair near a good light, warm lap blanket, steamy drink and pick up a book.

Remember books?

Those things that are sitting up on the shelves you have to dust all the time. Those things you have been moving from place to place through your life. Those things you purchase with hopes of reading but just put them away for another time.

Well the time is now.

As we all know, a book is nothing more than letters. Letters that together make words that lined up to make sentences. And sentences grouped together to make paragraphs.

These paragraphs assembled can relate ideas or teach or just entertain. The best will be repeated and cherished. Others will be skipped over and forgotten.

Depending how the editor, proofreader, publisher combine the author’s thoughts and grammar techniques the results may become a classic read and re-read for years to come.

One can get lost in the words printed on the page. They can describe places never before seen or people and places never ventured. Books can tell you where we came from, what we are made of, who we share the globe with and what is out there with the clouds and stars. They explain why we do what we do, either in technical scientific jargon or unknown characters that are read interacting in commonality to the present.

Some books even have pictures!

Have you ever attended a book party? Several gather together and discuss their reactions of a book. Each might read a passage and what they felt the authors intent was in the writing, while have a bottle of wine and cheese.

We can’t get people in the same room anymore so I guess these have to go digital.

Didn’t I say to turn off all your electrical communicational devices?

Try this.

Read a book… out loud.

Read either to yourself like you did when a kid following the syllables with you’re fingers sounding out each word…

Or

Read to someone else.

You read to your kids to put them asleep?

People enjoy being read to. That is basically what actors (celebrities or personalities) on the tube do. They are only reading what someone else has written. They are not real cowboys or news reporters or even presidents. They are just reading off the script.

Get one of the people who are isolated with you, find them a nice comfortable space close enough to hear your voice from socially distant and open the book.

Page one.

It doesn’t matter what the book is about. The reading is about your presentation.

Pacing the words, taking pauses, changing pitch in your vocal reproduction of what your eyes are reading is all part of the experience. If the listener has already read the book, they will enjoy your interpretation to the words like a sequel.

When your eyes get tired be sure to mark the spot so you can return and see how the story ends.