Reading when the world's on fire.

BY DREW BROWN

Drew Brown is a writer living in Los Angeles. You can follow him on Twitter @drewbrownwrites or on his website at drewbrownwrites.com.

Reading became my favorite pastime when I was four. I was a restless kid—my mom could hardly keep me seated for more than a few seconds—but the local library was the one place I could focus and get lost in. Sitting with a book taught me how to create silence, space, and time, even when my extroverted personality wanted to shun them for more urgent or exciting options.

But then…

2020 came knocking. We’re now approaching six months of Corona, and our newsfeeds are still inundated with scary numbers and heightening fears. What began as banding together to fight a pandemic has turned into campaign platforms and divisive rallying. Injustice towards people of color is still rife, and each day a new scandal is rocking a different sector of society. The loudest and most extreme voices, regrettably, seem to receive the most attention.

Reading no longer fits this world. Because it requires a certain level of removal from society, I am stuck within the possibility of being caught unaware of danger, calamity, or breaking news updates. With the world pressing in on itself, I feel I no longer have the option to create the silence, space, or time it takes to read.

The Privilege of Reading

At root, reading feels like buying into my privilege. Others in this world don’t have space or time to read a book—am I simply bending to my privilege by reading and creating silence, space, and time? Couldn’t there be something better to do?

Jenny Odell, in her exceptional book How to Do Nothing, describes two different types of “doing nothing,” both of which involve escaping. One seeks to escape the world and others, and the other opts out of the extremities of social media and technology—the urgency of “now”—in an effort to escape “laterally toward each other,” so that “we might just find that everything we wanted is already here” (xxi-xxiii).

However, her privilege is still before her: “I can go to the Rose Garden, stare into trees, and sit on hills all the time because I have a teaching job that only requires me to be on campus two days a week, not to mention a whole set of other privileges…. It’s very possible to understand the practice of doing nothing solely as a self-indulgent luxury.” But, “just because this right is denied to many people doesn’t make it any less of a right or any less important” (12).

I agree with her insights. There is a type of reading that can lead to negative escapism—ignoring the real world by building our own, becoming barricaded from reality by our bookshelves. But there is another type of reading which can draw us towards each other and deeper into empathy. To create silence, space, and time for this type of reading is a privilege, yes, but it is a privilege that drives us toward deeper empathy and engagement with the world and other people.

Some Great Books I Think You Should Buy and Read (Also, I’m Biased)

The following is a list of books that have helped me create silence, space, and time. I’ve tried to provide a good variation between novel and non-fiction, and just like any list, this is highly subjective—I’d appreciate your own picks in the comments below!

1. Gilead by Marilynne Robinson (Novel)

   This is an interesting planet. It deserves all the attention you can give it” (28). This book does what that quote says. Seriously. It’s beautiful.

2. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration by Isabel Wilkerson (Narrative Non-Fiction)

   I’m in the middle of this one. Technically a work of history, this book reads like a novel and provides essential and oft-overlooked perspectives on a time in history that directly connects to our own.

3. Our Souls at Night by Kent Haruf (Novel)

   The final book Kent Haruf wrote, this quick read explores loneliness, aging, and love in ways that refuse to bend to sentimentality or cloying dialogue. Read it, then watch the Netflix movie based on it.

4. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption by Bryan Stevenson (Narrative Non-Fiction)

   For anyone beginning to learn about the criminal justice system and the inequalities faced by many people, I suggest this book for its detail, compassion, and accessibility.

5. Underground Railroad by Colson Whitehead (Novel)

   A work of art is a reflection of the world it’s created in. This gripping, beautiful book is a prime example of this.

6. Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann (Narrative Non-Fiction)

   One: Martin Scorsese is said to be directing the movie version of this. Two: you can’t put it down. Three: as an Oklahoman coming to terms with my ancestry and my own connections to Indigenous peoples while living in a country coming to terms with its ancestry and connections to Indigenous peoples, this hit hard.

7. Crossing to Safety by Wallace Stegner (Novel)

   A novel about the friendship between two couples—I don’t want to spoil anything but no one has an affair. It is truly a story of friendship and fidelity.

8. How to Do Nothing: Resisting the Attention Economy by Jenny Odell (Non-Fiction)

   Quoted above, this little book brings you into a confrontation with your own assumptions of time and the ways it’s monopolized.

9. A Timbered Choir: The Sabbath Poems 1979-1997 by Wendell Berry (Poetry)

   Take these poems into nature and read them aloud. Trust me.

May I end with a poem from the above collection? It has been with me for quite some time and encapsulates the form of reading (and living) I am learning to embody:

“There is a day

when the road neither

comes nor goes, and the way

is not a way but a place” (216).

I hope your reading will bring you closer to the particular place and the particular people around you, in all of its and their particularities. Cheers, friend.