Not bookish, just hedonist

I simply love this paean to the pas­time of read­ing (I was going to say “the art of read­ing”, but then my anti-pretension warn­ing sys­tem kicked in):

“After all, to be known as a book lover — how grot­esque. It’s like being called a eunuch or an old maid; one always hears that faint sneer of dis­dain and con­des­cen­sion mixed with pity. To be book­ish is to be mousy, repressed, a shy wall­flower, incap­able of get­ting along with people, dreamy and poetic, help­less in the real world.”

While, in fact, I don’t see any­thing par­tic­u­larly wrong in being “dreamy and poetic”, and there’s also some­thing to be said for find­ing the real world a con­fus­ing place, I would agree that most of this descrip­tion of people who enjoy indul­ging them­selves in books is com­plete rubbish.

For­tu­nately, most of the people I know are sim­ilar to me — they don’t find any­thing strange in immers­ing one­self in a book for an entire day. Occa­sion­ally I notice the flicker of an odd reac­tion when I men­tion that, for instance, I might have spent the entire week­end holed up at home, with noth­ing but gor­geous music and the next two books on my “await­ing read­ing” list for com­pany. But as we head towards colder months and darker even­ings, I’d defy any­one to think of many bet­ter things to do on a week­end in the middle of winter than stay indoors with a good book … well, there are one or two altern­at­ives that spring to mind, but I’m talk­ing about sol­it­ary pursuits.

Why should indul­ging in book­ish­ness be regarded as pecu­liar? As Michael Dirda points out in his art­icle, read­ing is just another form of hedon­ism. Other people might get that hedon­ism via a drunken night out (indeed, I’ve been known to do this on one or two occa­sions), watch­ing a movie, sport, whatever. But read­ing a book that engages your emo­tions, gets you think­ing or provides sheer escap­ism is equally hedon­istic, if you’re a vora­cious bookworm.

Here’s a ques­tion for any other ded­ic­ated read­ers. Have you ever noticed that when you become involved in a really enthralling book, you find your­self sit­ting in increas­ingly bizarre pos­i­tions, not think­ing how you’re pla­cing your body? And then when you snap out of your rev­erie, you can hardly move? Do you have a bizarre read­ing pos­i­tion? Oh, it’s just me then.

Later this after­noon, you may well find me, curled up in my favour­ite chair, listen­ing to some sub­lime music, aim­ing to fin­ish one com­plex, thought-provoking book and pos­sibly start on another that looks rather more dreamy and sen­sual. It’s the per­fect day for it — breezy and over­cast. And it’s Sunday — a day that was surely inven­ted for the sole pur­pose of reading.

So if you must dis­turb me, speak quietly …