Reading is dead in Mexico

The Country That Stopped Reading is an op-ed by David Toscana. It's about Mexico's vast illiteracy. Even the teachers don't read. Amazing.

Heaven is a place where you can read all the time

When I was in my 20s, I lived in a huge apartment building in Manhattan. One of my memories from that time is walking up the block in the early morning, heading for the subway and work.

Along the way, there was something wonderful to see. In a ground-floor studio there lived an old couple, a man and woman, who enjoyed reading. No, I mean they really enjoyed reading. Every single time I passed their window, they were reading.

What skills have you learned through reading?

When I want to learn how to do something, I read a book about it. And then I read more books about it, and then more. In this way, I've learned to do a number of things.

I learned how to ride a motorcycle by reading a book. I never spoke to a single human being about motorcycles. I read a book, rented a bike on three successive weekends and tooled around the Shea Stadium parking lot, trying stuff they talked about in the book. When I could do it all, I scheduled my test and got my motorcycle license.

Then I bought a bike and read the manual. I never in my life spoke to another human being about motorcycle maintenance, but my bike was always in perfect condition because I learned how to take care of it by reading the manual. (I also have a good work ethic and did everything the manual suggested.)

There was a time in my human rights work when I became aggravated by the mistakes that always appeared in our published works. Someone on the production end muffed it every single time, often killing the very point of the publication. So I bought books on desktop publishing and the elements of good page design. I read them all, practiced each lesson they taught me, and was able to create four good-looking newsletters, tons of flyers and reports (and many funny things for my friends). I learned it all from reading. (Same with software. I'm the guy who actually read the manuals. You may have heard of me.)

Enough from my end. What skills have you learned from a book?

Let us parse

Have you ever noticed how your brain reads? I was watching mine as I read the sci-news the other day and I came to some interesting conclusions. Let's use a story on physorg to illustrate the point. Here are three sentences, and I'll comment after each:

"A powerful solar eruption that triggered a huge geomagnetic storm has disturbed radio communications and could disrupt electrical power grids, radio and satellite communication in the next days, NASA said."

As you read that, note how your brain chooses sensible little groups of words to absorb: "powerful solar eruption" is the first; "triggered" is the second; "huge geomagnetic storm" is the next, etc. We see clumps of words that describe concepts, and then we string the concepts together to understand the sentence. Let's take another:

"A strong wave of charged plasma particles emanating from the Jupiter-sized sun spot, the most powerful seen in four years, has already disrupted radio communication in southern China."

Okay, let's look at this sentence in the same manner. It also gives a stream of word pictures, the only difference here being the insertion of the almost parenthetical "the most powerful seen in four years". With one simple interruption, we can still manage to grasp the meaning of the sentence with relative ease. (I would have broken it into two sentences to make it simpler, but that's me.) Now let's look at a final sentence from the same article:

"X-class flares are the most powerful of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms," disturbing telecommunications and electric grids, NASA said Wednesday."

Okay, now that one was harder to understand. That's because it's somewhat recursive and you have to jump through various perspectives. First, "of all solar events that can trigger radio blackouts and long-lasting radiation storms" is not simple to track; it's recursive, referring back to "all solar events". And then come two changing perspectives separated by commas. First the result: "disturbing telecommunications and electric grids" and then "NASA said Wednesday." This sentence doesn't help the reader's mind to flow from concept to concept. It's passable but not a winner.

I found it refreshing to observe how my brain reads. It gave me another way to look at my sentences. For the next few days, I'm going to look for these small word groups in my own writing and see if they're strung together in a way that moves the reader through the sentence, easily and simply. It almost sounds too basic to be a useful observation but somehow going through this exercise made me see things a bit differently. I feel like I've understood something new.

Basic and wonkish at the same time, I know. But this is the kind of understanding that can help me as a writer. Sometimes the thing you really need is a way to look at your work with a fresh eye. (Especially after the 10th edit. Oy.)