Why Do We Read?

Founder and Managing Director, Ex-L-Ence Publishing.

As an author of two factual books and as a publisher of fiction and non-fiction I find myself pondering the question – Why do we read?

I am fairly certain that for non-fiction books the answer is the information inside them, it is that which we are after.  Assuming the content can easily be assimilated by many people the book is an excellent medium to transfer this knowledge.  You may remember when you were at school a particularly good teacher who inspired you and give you (verbally) excellent information – however, I suspect you remember a few fairly poor teachers who neither inspired nor give information about the subject that they were meant to be teaching… Suddenly your course books were your friend…

If you stop and think about it, reading, however ancient, is an unnatural means of communication and needs an inanimate physical intermediary – a ‘tablet’ or ‘scroll’ or ‘letter’ or ‘book’. A book or information passing in physical form is just a transference of knowledge by writing. It has many advantages in terms of verbal transfer as the writer is able to send someone else to deliver the message in his or her own words. Also, it can be given to many readers at the same time and they can even take it away for future reference, it becomes a permanent record.

In this day and age, wouldn’t a video on ‘YouTube’ be better? Especially as the video could be loaded onto your phone or eBook reader with the aid of a pair of ear bud headphones you can privately, access the information anywhere and anytime.

Reading has the advantage that it lets us absorb information at our own pace – a recording has a specific speed and unless we do a lot of start stopping we have to adapt to its pace and delivery. A book (or eBook) can be scanned or you can skip forwards or backwards to a particular topic that you need with ease… Obviously this is more relevant with a factual or reference book.

Reading also has other advantages, you can flip back to a previous page; you can quickly glance at the previous chapter whilst keeping your current place; you can make notes and underline important passages…. and interestingly… although all of those can be done easily on a physical book they can also be done (perhaps even more easily) with an eBook.

OK, there are benefits to reading non-fiction but what about fiction? Surely TV or film or video is better? NO NO NO!!! The brilliance of the written word shines best in the form of fiction. In no other means of storytelling is the receiver of the story, so much involved with the creation process. Indeed, perhaps just as much as the writer – no matter how skilfully the writer describes: “The fast moving car, came racing towards him, its engine roaring as loud as the bright green custom paint-job” – The look of the car, the sound of the engine, the specific shade of green, are ALL constructs that each individual reader creates for themselves and thus a story to an extend becomes personal to you, this isn’t possible with video as there is too much is decided by the production crew. Think of a book that you have read and loved and then seen on TV or film… was it as good? Maybe, sometimes, but often not! Personally, I enjoyed the Peter Jackson ‘Lord of The Rings’ films and quite liked most of the actors that were cast to play the characters roles – but, the casting of Cate Blanchett as the Lady Galadriel didn’t work for me – the scenes she was in, as having read the book many times – I happened to have a completely different mental image of what the Lady Galadriel should look like… Silly I know, but it does illustrate (I hope) the power of the imagination and how we use it when we read fiction.

One of C P Sennett’s books ‘The Squire’ showed me, when I read the book, something else – when a fiction book has a large cast of characters the characters you associate with the most and enjoy reading about may or may not be the central ones. In ‘The Squire’, with a couple of subsidiary characters – my imagination ‘fleshed out’ or ‘filled in’ attributes that resonated with me… They were not planned by the author. That is something that reading a book uniquely lets us do.

I personally believe that eBooks will within the next ten or so years take over from physical books sales in every aspect.  The actual concept of a ‘book’ that tells a story may well be around until the end of humankind but the medium used will certainly change.  Holograms could well be the next version telling us stories, who knows.

Why do we read? I think it is because it allows us to be people we could never be, do things we would love to do, extend ourselves in ways far beyond what is normally possible, in short, to live a fuller and more enjoyable life… Hmmm, I wonder if early human cave drawings of a spear and animal were messages to his wife, “Going hunting, be back later.” I wonder if he knew what he was starting…

Also just think what information would have been lost if we didn’t write things down.  The human race would truly be lost.