Each year there is usually one task in the Read Harder Challenge list that asks me to locate a book on some author demographic that I do not track (I don’t track many at all, really). This year it was a book by a d/Deaf author. To my knowledge my 600 deep book list didn’t have any so off to do some internet sleuthing I went. Which brought me to Shannon Reed who is hard of hearing. While I don’t know if Reed associates herself with the Deaf community, it is clear through her writing that she does with the broader disability community and discusses it in the context of Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries, and Just One More Page Before Lights Out which leads me to being comfortable using her most recent book for the task.
The thesis of this collection of essays centered around the question imbedded in the title is that we should be reading for pleasure more than we are, and that there are lots of avenues to additional reading that vary on the pleasurable scale – and that’s okay. Each chapter title is a different reason we read, from There’s Always Another Page to Because I Wanted Free Pizza to To Make Us Cry, as well as chapters that function more as humorous interstitials (Signs You May Be a Female Character in a Work of Historical Fiction, for example) which help flesh out Reed’s points and highlight her background as a humorist.
What I enjoyed most about Reed’s positioning herself as a reader and bibliophile first and foremost, and an educator with an MFA second, is that while she is often talking about the mechanics of how books and stories affect us, she is also talking about the very real ways in which we read. There is a no shame component in making peace with sometimes you are just going to skim that book because your brain isn’t caught up in it, you may not have accurately predicted which book is going to speak to you, you might need to read something even if it wasn’t what you would choose, and sometimes your most favorite book will stop being your most favorite. But also, that sometimes a book will catch you off guard and change how you think, sometimes a book will live in your mind and come back to you when you need it, or sometimes the thing that is hardest to read is also the thing that is uniquely fulfilling. At the end of the day this book is Reed’s love letter to reading and it was lovely to spend a bit of time sinking into that.
Bingo Space: And. There’s always another book.
Bingo Five: One, Wheels, Summer, And, Repair
