I don't read nearly as many books as I used to or as I would like to. I literally read all day, 8 to 5 p.m., five days a week. When I get home at night, the last thing that I want to do is stick a bunch of words right in front of my nose and concentrate on what they mean. The stuff I read every day is technical and often, it’s very much so, to the point it regularly does flybys over my head, and I have to re-read to make sense of it. Come 5:01 p.m., I hate words.
That's a shame because reading has historically been one of my favorite and most passionate pastimes. Straight out of college, I didn't have a TV for roughly two years. When I did finally break down and begrudgingly part with some of meager wages for a whopping 13-inch set, I only had terrestrial channels to entertain me, and those were only on the air until about midnight on weekdays and maybe 1 a.m. on weekends. Thus, I spent the majority of my downtime in the bar drinking, at someone’s house drinking, or at my own apartment drinking and reading books. A good journalist I dedicated myself to become.
For the next decade, I read and read and read. Once you start to engage in reading on the regular, it becomes an addiction. Although I concentrated mostly on the classics the first year or so, I'd read pretty much anything thereafter. Graphic novels. Biographies. Philosophy. History. Photography books. Anything I could buy cheap from a local used book store or get from the library.
Those years served me well and gave me a pretty solid foundation. Today, most reading I do has something to do with music or sports--lightweight stuff that doesn't require too much of an attention span. I almost never read fiction, although I'm not entirely sure why. I made an exception several months back, though, after my daughter asked if I'd read "The Hunger Games."
“Um, no,” I said. “I haven’t even heard of it. Should I have?” It seems pop culture has passed me right by. She told me that yes indeed I should read it. That I’d enjoy it. That it wouldn’t take me long, but it was worth my time. After reading the plotline on the sleeve, I hemmed and hawed, coming up with one excuse or another as to why I’d consider it, but maybe now wasn’t the best time. Deep down, I didn't have a lot of faith that I'd be spending my time all that wisely. I was wrong
I should have trusted my daughter upfront. In hindsight, I'm thankful that I did. True, the book wasn't the best work of fiction I've even dived into. Still, I got sucked into Katniss' world soon enough, and I found myself ending up turning pages about as quickly as my eyes could take each sentence in. Before long, I was developing theories as to who was going to meet his or her demise next and if Katniss would ultimately endure. Simply put, reading "The Hunger Games" was damn fun, and damn if it didn't take my mind off of this given responsibility or the other, if even only temporarily.
More important than anything, though, reading the book gave my daughter and I something to talk about at the dinner table. It gave us a chance to exchange our thoughts and wishes and expectations about something other than grades and chores and getting a job and all the other nuisances life throws our way. It gave us common ground. It gave us a tie that binds. That's so vital.
I live in a house with four females. That presents challenges, including not always knowing the right thing to say or how to say it. I don’t always understand why something I consider trivial they consider imperative and vice versa. That’s why I’m thankful to have shared “The Hunger Games” with my daughter, and I'm actually excited to see the movie, hopefully with my daughter, after it opens this weekend.
Thank you, Mikah, and thank you, Katniss.
* For a great review of "The Hunger Games" as written from a 10-year-old girl, check out the great blog Book Monkeys from my longtime friend Clark and his daughter.
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