The year dedicated to the problems of the Russian language and reading has come to an end. I do not know to what extent the problems of stimulating reading have been solved, but in any case, it has been possible to draw attention to this problem*. It is horrifying that for tens of percent of the population, reading has already become something alien and extraneous. And the proportion of families where parents read aloud to children has decreased tenfold in the life of one generation.
For some reason, reading books by the majority began to be perceived as an optional leisure pastime, a way to fill a pause, nothing more. For this, of course, “formatted” consumer goods are best suited. It is in growing demand. The same books that «load», make you think, require concentration, are rejected in the bud, become the lot of a bunch of eccentrics who have nothing to do.
Meaningful work can be more fulfilling than relaxed doing nothing
In fact, there are books and books, readers and readers, reading and reading. At least two very different processes are called by the same word «reading». One is a form of recreation, loading the brain with the same type of verbal mass, the main advantage of which is the lightness and liveliness of the plot and style and the recognizability of the meaning that does not threaten to shake the established picture of the world.
Another process is the form of work, carving sparks of meaning in the collisions of the content of the book with the usual image of reality, leading to mini-surprises, micro-discoveries and nano-transformations of consciousness and personality. Not every book and not every reader is suitable for this.
But those who take pleasure in stretching their mental faculties to expand and deepen their understanding of how the world works in subtleties and details, are in the end a big winner. It is about such people in America that they say: in our world, those people who read books will always control those who watch TV.
If easy reading can be replaced by other forms of easy pastime, then “hard” reading cannot be replaced by anything. And the absence of this in life is irreplaceable. In addition, work, strange as it may sound, can bring even more pleasure and a surge of energy than relaxed doing nothing, provided that it is filled with meaning. The same applies to two different types of reading — communication with format and communication with meaning.
Happy New Year! And don’t just read magazines!