A Return to Reading

A forgotten skill for some?

Much has been written in the last couple of years about the decrease at all ages in reading books. Not just magazines, essays on-line, but real books. And while the lament often goes to the younger generation, it applies to people of all ages. And gender differences are stark too. From the National Endowment for the arts: Men-Women Split in Reading, and a ChatGPT summary for more details: Men versus Women Reading. A recent subscription Podcast by The Free Press “Old School with Shilo Brooks” talks about this more. For example, the interview with Dr Cornell West Why we Still Need Plato prompted me to take up rereading The Republic of Plato by Allan Brooks, not for the faint of heart but while written around 380 B.C. as relevant perhaps today as it was back then. And I hope I will learn more from it than the first time I tried reading this book!

I have first-hand experience with private book clubs: my wife has been in a women’s book club for decades, and I often read books she read and recommends to me, but I have trouble finding male friends interested in a book let alone participating in a book club (other than in our Texas No Labels group where we mostly read books related to politics).

Lucky for me, I grew up during a time where there was no internet, no social media or streaming services, so books was how one learned and got entertained in the case of novels. And having the good fortune of attending a school where we had to learn Latin and ancient Greek left me with a lifelong interest in the Roman and Greek history. Later in life I reread some of the classic literature (in English this time) and it gave me a new appreciation of what I (was forced to) read in Grade School.

I am not going to refer you to Goodreads or any of the other excellent sources for books. Instead, I want to give you a rather eclectic example of some books that I think have a good message and provide learning opportunities, mixed with a few semi-biographical novels. I’ll show the Amazon links, not because you should buy them there, but because the descriptions and reviews may be worthwhile. Most books cost much less than $ 20, or even less as used books.

Here’s the list: two books on politics, two on energy, two semi-autobiographical novels, and two about ancient Greece. Most, other than two novels, are relatively short, so no I am not going to list Plato’s Republic, or Democracy in America by Alexis the Tocqueville and books to pick from first.

Profiles in Courage by John F. Kennedy : timeless lessons on the most cherished of virtues—courage and patriotism – profiles of eight senators from John Quincy Adams to Robert Taft. Of course the book ends in 1956, so one could imagine that if it were written today, a few could have been added, like Joe Lieberman, and perhaps Patrick Moynihan, you pick and choose.

The Bill of Obligations (Ten Habits of Good Citizens) by Richard Haass: The United States faces dangerous threats from without; the greatest peril to the country, however, comes from within. Richard Haass argues that, to solve our climate of division and safeguard our democracy, the very idea of citizenship must be revised and expanded. The Bill of Rights is at the center of our Constitution, but here is a way forward: to place obligations on the same footing as rights. Be informed, get involved, stay open to compromise, remain civil, reject violence, value norms, promote common good, respect government service, support teaching of civics, put country first. Seems so “common sense” and may be bland platitude, but how much do we see of this in our discourse on social media, the behavior and actions by leaders, and in our own behavior at times.

Volt Rush - The Winners and Losers in the Race to go Green by Henry Sanderson: We depend on a handful of metals and rare earths to power our phones and computers. Increasingly, we rely on them to power our cars and our homes. Whoever controls these finite commodities will become rich beyond imagining. The author Sanderson lets us meet the characters, companies, and nations scrambling for the new resources, linking remote mines in the Congo and Chile’s Atacama Desert to giant Chinese battery factories, shadowy commodity traders, secretive billionaires. What may seem green in our Western eyes may not be so green when we look at the human labor violations and pollution caused by mining for Lithium, Cobalt, Nickel and Copper in countries like the Congo.

How the world Really Works by Vaclac Smil : An essential analysis of the modern science and technology that makes our twenty-first century lives possible—a scientist’s investigation into what science really does, and does not, accomplish. The author details the four pillars of modern civilization—cement, steel, plastics, and ammonia—and the energy required to produce them. You may wonder “ammonia?” Vaclav considers it as the most important material, surprise! Without its use to make nitrogen fertilizer, we couldn’t feed half of the people on this earth. 80% of global ammonia production is used to fertilize crops.

On to two novels with some auto-biographical elements:

The Covenant of Water by Abraham Verghese: Some of the recommendations: From the New York Times-bestselling author of Cutting for Stone comes a stunning and magisterial epic of love, faith, and medicine, set in Kerala, South India, following three generations of a family seeking the answers to a strange secret. And from Oprah: “One of the best books I’ve read in my entire life”. My wife and I listened to the audio version as narrated by the author, and Oprah in our opinion was not exaggerating.

The Bird Hotel by Joyce Maynard: After a childhood filled with heartbreak, Irene, a talented artist, finds herself in a small Central American village where she checks into a beautiful but decaying lakefront hotel called La Llorona at the base of a volcano. The Bird Hotel tells the story of this young American who, after suffering tragedy, restores and runs La Llorona. Along the way we meet a rich assortment of characters who live in the village or come to stay at the hotel. With a mystery at its center and filled with warmth, drama, romance, humor, pop culture, and a little magical realism. One of my wife’s book club books that I found very hard to put down and has some auto-biographical elements.

And finally two books that may give you a different interpretation of Greek History and Myth around the time of Troy, the Iliad and Odyssey, and what their relevance can be for modern times.

Sailing the Wine Dark Sea - Why the Greeks Matter by Thomas Cahill: In the city-states of Athens and Sparta and throughout the Greek islands, honors could be won in making love and war, and lives were rife with contradictions. By developing the alphabet, the Greeks empowered the reader, demystified experience, and opened the way for civil discussion and experimentation—yet they kept slaves. The glorious verses of the Iliad recount a conflict in which rage and outrage spur men to action and suggest that their “bellicose society of gleaming metals and rattling weapons” is not so very distant from more recent campaigns of “shock and awe.” Freely flowing wine were essential to the high life. Granting equal time to the sacred and the profane, Cahill rivets our attention to the legacies of an ancient and enduring worldview.

An Odyssey: A Father, a Son, and an Epic by Daniel Mendelsohn: a deeply moving tale of a father and son’s transformative journey in reading--and reliving--Homer’s epic masterpiece. When eighty-one-year-old Jay Mendelsohn decides to enroll in the undergraduate Odyssey seminar his son teaches at Bard College, the two find themselves on an adventure as profoundly emotional as it is intellectual. For Jay, a retired research scientist who sees the world through a mathematician’s unforgiving eyes, this return to the classroom is his “one last chance” to learn the great literature he’d neglected in his youth--and, even more, a final opportunity to more fully understand his son, a writer and classicist.

This was a profoundly moving book to me, and perhaps will be to every son and father, who went on different paths throughout their lives, and perhaps only nearing the end of a life begin to understand each other.

If you have read this post all the way to the end, ordered just one of these books and enjoyed the read, I have accomplished my goal of the post! Enjoy the couch or easy chair, without TV and read!