The Sanctity of Books
Something has been weighing on my heart for the past few months - the sacrosanctness of books.
Why?
Why are books so exalted while television and even radio is looked down upon? What have books done to make them so holy, so untouchable, whereas "Turn off that darn TV!!" is a constant phrase in my own home.
Can't books be just as smutty, just as frivolous, just as vapid as television? Don't try to tell me that The Devil Wears Prada is somehow automatically better simply by being in book form than "The Bells of St. Mary's". Yet, that is exactly what people seem to mean when I hear them screech, "Turn off the stupid TV and read a book!"
Reading is just as sedentary an activity as television, it will ruin your eyes faster than television, but, for some reason, the fact that books force you to imagine the story yourself rather than it being shown to you is held as the evidence that books are inherently better.
Why am I suddenly posting this now when I said it's been on my heart for several months? Yesterday in my C.S. Lewis class we began studying An Experiment in Criticism. We aren't reading it as a class, rather, the professor is outlining it for us chapter by chapter. We got into a discussion about it, as the professor often forces us to do, and one of the things that came up was the fact that the Harry Potter books are somehow okay because "they got children to read" - as though reading for the sake of reading is good and it doesn't matter what it is.
People, this is stupid. Reading should not be an end in and of itself. What you are reading is far more important. To simply allow yourself or your kids to sit down and let a book speak to you without guarding yourself is spiritually dangerous; you have to enter it with your own preconceived notions and ideas. The same can be said for watching a movie or listening to the radio.
So please, next time you think that television is inherently bad while reading is inherently good, research some of what's out there. It's not the medium that matters, it's the content.
~~
And, just to give you some perspective, books for the sake of books haven't always been so highly praised:
~ Jane Austin, Northanger Abbey
~~~
EDIT: And, as a delicious irony, I have now added the "Books to Read Before I Die" gadget to my sidebar. I'm not saying books are bad. I'm just wondering why they're so exalted.
Why?
Why are books so exalted while television and even radio is looked down upon? What have books done to make them so holy, so untouchable, whereas "Turn off that darn TV!!" is a constant phrase in my own home.
Can't books be just as smutty, just as frivolous, just as vapid as television? Don't try to tell me that The Devil Wears Prada is somehow automatically better simply by being in book form than "The Bells of St. Mary's". Yet, that is exactly what people seem to mean when I hear them screech, "Turn off the stupid TV and read a book!"
Reading is just as sedentary an activity as television, it will ruin your eyes faster than television, but, for some reason, the fact that books force you to imagine the story yourself rather than it being shown to you is held as the evidence that books are inherently better.
Why am I suddenly posting this now when I said it's been on my heart for several months? Yesterday in my C.S. Lewis class we began studying An Experiment in Criticism. We aren't reading it as a class, rather, the professor is outlining it for us chapter by chapter. We got into a discussion about it, as the professor often forces us to do, and one of the things that came up was the fact that the Harry Potter books are somehow okay because "they got children to read" - as though reading for the sake of reading is good and it doesn't matter what it is.
People, this is stupid. Reading should not be an end in and of itself. What you are reading is far more important. To simply allow yourself or your kids to sit down and let a book speak to you without guarding yourself is spiritually dangerous; you have to enter it with your own preconceived notions and ideas. The same can be said for watching a movie or listening to the radio.
So please, next time you think that television is inherently bad while reading is inherently good, research some of what's out there. It's not the medium that matters, it's the content.
~~
And, just to give you some perspective, books for the sake of books haven't always been so highly praised:
Although [novels] have afforded more extensive and unaffected pleasure than those of any other literary corporation in the world, no species of composition has been so much decried. From pride, ignorance, or fashion, our foes are almost as many as our readers. And while the abilities of the nine-hundredth abridger of the History of England, or of the man who collects and publishes in a volume some dozen lines of Milton, Pope, and Prior, with a paper from the Spectator, and a chapter from Sterne, are eulogized by a thousand pens--there seems almost a general wish of decrying the capacity and undervaluing the labour of the novelist, and of slighting the performances which have only genius, wit, and taste to recommend them.
~~~
EDIT: And, as a delicious irony, I have now added the "Books to Read Before I Die" gadget to my sidebar. I'm not saying books are bad. I'm just wondering why they're so exalted.
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