Is Reading Misleading--Confessions of a Child Bookworm

This is a very painful thing to write.

When I was young, I lived in the world of books. The world around me had difficulties into which I shall not go, but it was made up for by the great assortment of friends I met in books.

I read a great deal. I loved to read, and some of the books I read had a tremendous influence upon my life.

Whether it was Snufkin and Moomintroll, Susan and Colin from Alderley Edge, Bilbo and Thorin, or a talking badger and a faun, the characters in books kept me company and cheered my days.

I remember reading in the library in fifth grade and looking up, having forgotten where I was, so immersed was I in the story.

I remember crying at the death of my hero, Thorin Oakenshield, and trying to hide the tears because I was on the school bus, where I might be seen and mocked. (I was ten. It was an age when crying was particularly despised.)

I remember crying again when Durathror, Prince of Dwarves, died, tied to a column like Cuchulainn, because the ravens who worked for the enemy had torn apart his elfish, feathered, flying cloak. That was not as bad, because my mother read that book to my brother and I, so I was safe at home.

And I still remember the most magical moment in The Weirdstone of Brisingamen, when Durathror, earlier on, realized that the elves were near and called to them, reminding them of their friendship with him. (It was they who had given him the feathered flying cloak.) But they did not acknowledge him.

I remember coming upon the idea of homeschooling for the first time in a book by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, and thinking that being able to take your time and study a subject you were interested into its fullest before having to switch subjects sounded like the most glorious thing I had ever heard of.

I also remember reading another book by Snyder, or maybe the same one, in which there was an old lady who had the cheerful attitude and open mind that children have and often lose—the kind that allows them to never stop learning—and I determined that I wanted to be that kind of adult when I grew up.

That’s a decision I still think is a good one.

I remember the week I read a book about a rabbit and another about a fox. In the first one, I rooted for the rabbit to get away, in the second, for the fox to catch its dinner.

When I stopped and thought about that afterwards, I learned a great deal about the world and the value of point-of-view.

I remember reading about those who fought Nazi or tyrants or supervillains and wishing I lived in such a time and could stand up to such an enemy.

There were many good things about this, books I appreciate to this day. But there were also pitfalls that I did not see as a child.

I was vaguely aware that, in earlier periods of time, many people had disapproved of excessive novel reading. They thought some kind of ill came from spending too much time in the world of books. But nobody believed that when I was growing up.

Everyone, both in school and on TV and, most importantly, in the books themselves, insisted that reading was practically the best thing you could do.

What I never thought about as a child was: Why did the books portray reading as so wonderful?

What never occurred to me was: Books are written by authors. Authors are usually people who, themselves, love books. That’s why they want to write. So in the books I read as a child, an inordinate number of characters were readers.

And those readers portrayed reading as if it was the most important thing in the world.

I also did not know that characters are easier to identify with if they are suffering, separated from those around them, alone.

So in these books, the characters weren’t just readers. They were readers who were persecuted and alone. They were wise, elite, better than the boring, dull normal people, who were like sleepwalkers—not really living life to its fullest because they didn’t live in the secret world of books and the imagination that everyone would want to live in, if they could…but most people weren’t wise enough, or intelligent enough, to get in.

If you want an example, think of Harry Potter—the poor, abused chosen one, misunderstood by everyone around him and alone in the world, except, maybe, for a few good friends

Some people call characters of this mindset “Secret Kings.”

This mindset is an easy one to put across in a book. It can make an excellent story! It makes the main character easily relatable…but it shouldn’t be our mindset.

I read about characters with this mindset so often as a young person, I just believed it.

I believed I was like that. I believe the way these characters thought about themselves and their plight was how I should think.

In retrospect, it’s kind of odd to believe people who are out living their lives experienced less of life than someone who was just reading about living.

But I didn’t question it.

In retrospect, wanting to live in another time, another place, to fight a different enemy, to live a different life…

In a way, that’s a kind of envy.

But I didn’t realize it because every book and story I read praised doing exactly that.

Back in my mom’s day, a hero might often be a young man who was both a valedictorian and captain of the football team. An example of such a character—one who is both clever and buff—is Fred from Scooby-Do. He is big, strong, and the clever one who works out the plans.

But by the time I was a teen, this was changing. I don’t know if part of this was that they stopped having a grade-point-average requirement for football players in many schools, or if it was pure fancy. Books have to have villains. No one can be persecuted unless someone persecutes them. And who better to do so than someone who excels at the exact things at which our reader-heroes fail?

Instead of being the heroes, jocks became bullies, and, thus, people to be looked down upon.

Reading books taught me many good lessons. I learned tolerance, seeing other people’s points of view, and other good qualities.

But I also began to believe this view that so many books portrayed—that we readers were part of some secret elite, that we were somehow better or more alive than the rest of humanity.

In the book Wanderer in the Spirit Lands, there is a scene where the main character, Franchezzo, is told by an ancestor (who is currently in Hell) that the ancestor was with him in all his best moments. Franchezzo is pleased—until he realized that what the man means by “best” is, in fact, Franchezzo’s worst moments—the moments when Franchezzo had been the most prideful and arrogant.

It is a painful thing to realize that what you thought were some of your best moments were not.

And slowly this has happened to me…with reading.

Not that I think I should not have done it. I still love reading. That’s not going to go away. But I realized that many of the ideas and attitudes I picked up from my reading and thought of as my best qualities…were not.

Yes, I had struggles in my life, similar to some of the characters I read about, but identifying with these struggles didn’t help me.

It made me assume that I couldn’t get along with people with whom, I have learned as an adult, I am perfectly capable of getting along. But I didn’t try, because I assumed I was a lonely reader, separated from the masses by my great imagination, lonely and misunderstood.

I can remember standing on the playground and thinking these things— how lonely and misunderstood and separated from the other children I was.

Do you know what I wasn’t thinking? Oh, that girl? She’s the image and likeness of God, just like me. Maybe if I were less caught up in something she doesn’t care about—like my ow imagination—I could be more friendly to her.

Or: I cannot be alone because God is with me, so I need not spend so much time sulking over how lonely I am.

I don’t blame little me. She did the best she could.

It never occurred to her that the things characters thought in books were put in there deliberately, to cut the character off from others to make his plight more dramatic. She just thought those were the kinds of thoughts people had.

It wasn’t until I grew up and had to slowly teach myself to not think in such a way, to not indulge my idea of loneliness, to turn to God when things were wrong instead of sulking and mulling over them, that I began to realize…

…maybe what I had learned from all those books about “people like me” had not been as helpful as I thought.

Today, when thinking like a victim is being vastly overdone, I wonder what the answer is.

How do we enjoy stories—books, TV, movies, anime, etc.—and not fall into the trap of thinking the way characters think, when their methods of thinking are chosen for dramatic effect, not for edification?

I don’t have a simple answer.

I still love stories. I don’t think going back to despising novels and only reading for edification is the answer.

I do think we need to be more aware of what thoughts we are accepting as ours and, maybe, take a few steps toward not indulging a victim mentality, at least, in ourselves.

We are not Secret Kings, destined for greater things than our non-reading fellows.

(Oh, there is someone who whispers that to us, and it’s not someone to whom we want to lend an ear!)

We are Children of the King—but we are all Children of that King.