Reading

Growing up, whenever we traveled for vacation, I would inevitably have a bag filled with a half-dozen books in tow. They could be library books or books that I'd read a thousand times, but inevitably, I would’ve made my way through most of the books by the time our vacation was over.

Now, I've never really stopped reading. I spend hours a day perusing various news sites, online tech journals, and reading entertainment industry trades. In all honesty, I probably read as much today as I ever read in the past. The only difference is I stopped reading books.

This has always been one of those odd battles for me. I’ve never struggled with reading, but even as a kid, my mom—ever the teacher and librarian—would struggle to get me to read fiction. She even credits my discovery of Star Wars—and my desire to consume everything related to it—with getting me to read something other than a history book. But after the English classes of middle school, high school and college filled with classic pieces of literature, fiction has once again fallen to the wayside. I would still read, but I wouldn't be shocked if I was averaging only one-to-two books of fiction per year after I transferred to film school. In high school, I would’ve been reading one-to-two a month.

While the internet is a worthy replacement for non-fiction and news, I decided that my reading habits needed a kick in the proverbial behind. So, a few weeks ago, I started reading. A lot.

In the past three weeks, I’ve read the first three books in The Expanse series by James S. A. Corey, two books by John Scalzi (if you are a Trek fan, you need to read Redshirts), and, even though it was non-fiction, I also read Wil Wheaton’s Just A Geek. And because today is Hobbit Day, I’ve also started doing an in-depth re-read of The Lord of the Rings, something that’s been on my to-do list for awhile. Now, much of this reading onslaught is due to me currently enjoying hashtag funemployment, so it’s inevitable that I will eventually slow down. But I hope that this current effort pays off to become a good habit.

They Probably Couldn't Even Find It On a Map

Back in college, before I decided to go off and study film, I studied English. I had one teacher who spoke with pride about her dog-eared, note-ridden books. She encouraged the class to take pencils to our books, to underline passages we liked and write notes in the margins. Since we were college students and had to buy copies of the book, she thought that we aught to make the books our own. She wanted our books filled with our questions about character motivations, observations and insights we had, to dig dig deep into the text, becoming active readers rather than passive ones. I never wrote a note in that book. I haven't written anything in any book. For some reason, I never could. It probably doesn't help that my mom worked as a librarian for a bit when I was in middle school, but in my eyes, writing notes in a book was no better than graffiti on a wall (which is one reason why I thank jeebus for ebooks, but more on that at another time).

But, I now admit that I was wrong. If you own the book, writing a note or underlining a passage, all to help your understatnding, that fine. Go for it. But this. This is desecration:

On page 21 of an LA Public Library copy of Caliban's War—Book 2 of The Expanse—some dumbfuck decided to spew their prejudice onto the book. I bet this fuck couldn't find Punjab on a map. I could probably hand them a map that has Punjab highlighted with arrows pointing to it from every direction, and they still wouldn't be able to find it. If I said it was a mountainous region shared by Turkey, Iran, and Iraq, as far as they would know, that's right. Because that's totally where Punjab is! Except, it isn't. That would be Kurdistan. Punjab is in India and Pakistan.

"But, that's not fair, Logan!" an imaginary blog reader might cry out. "Just because they're prejudiced, doesn't mean they're geographcially illiterate!" True, imaginary reader, but even with a casual reading and interpretation of the fucking book, I can still safely say that they're a fucking idiot. Why, you may ask? Because one of the major points of The Expanse book series—at least in the 2.25 books I've read so far—is that humanity needs to put aside it's petty differences. Despite that, the dumbfuck still wrote "Fuck Punjabis" in the book. Why? Beacuse he's a dumbfuck.

So, to the aforementioned dumbfuck: Were you paying attention? Were the words too big? Or is your head wedged too tightly up your own ass? I bet that headupassification leads to oxygen deprivation and the hindrance of one's own mental faculties.

But, most importantly, my dear dumbfuck, please don't write it in a fucking library book. Go out, buy a copy, and then go to town defacing that one instead. Acutally, no. Don't do that. Don't write your assinine racism in the book. Just read it. Read lines like this one, from the third book in the series, Abaddon's Gate: 

"The Ring didn't put us on alert," he said. "It's the Martians. Even with that thing out there, we're still thinking about shooting each other. That's pretty fucked up. Sorry. Messed up."

"It seems like we should be able to see past our human differences when we're confronted with something like this, doesn't it?"

My dear dumbfuck, read and understand what the book was saying about humanity—that despite all our differences, we are still one people. And dumbfucks who right "Fuck Punjabis" in a book are a part of the problem.