The Polliwog Journal

Lisa Adams and John Heath have attempted to analyze the needs and habits of American readers in their book Why We Read What We Read. The cover announces “a delightfully opinionated journey through contemporary bestsellers,” and the book reads easily, perhaps a bit too “delightfully.” The authors’ casual style, however, belies their serious intent, which goes beyond showing us what we read and why to illuminating the critical need for Americans to read something worthwhile.

Adams and Heath do not openly debate the good vs. evil in terms of literary value, but they do suggest there are some books more worthy of reading than others. They lament our “diminishing ability to read well,” and point out that “less than half of Americans read any literary fiction or what might be called ‘literature’—novels, poetry, or drama” (275).

What we do read, as a nation, especially women, are romance novels and self-help books. Adams and Heath conclude that such books are not generally “works of scholarship, but words of advice from people who make a living giving advice” (137). And while these books sometimes help people feel better about their lives, it is not always in the way the authors of the books may have imagined. Audiences sometimes look to these books as they would a talk show on which a dysfunctional family airs their pent up grievances. “The anecdotes of bad marriages and screwed-up partners actually [make] readers feel better about themselves” (169).

Having once read a romance novel or two, I related more to the sections on romance novels. The analysis was sharp and accurate, as far as I can tell. Romance novels, despite their steamy covers, are actually quite traditional fantasies. The formula for love, no matter how steamy or illicit, is that it is expected to lead to marriage. But, as Adams and Heath point out, “these novels celebrate a quick and often superficial path to romantic bliss. Far from the antidote to divorce, adultery, and ennui, these false expectations may be one cause of them” (162).

And yet, it seems American women crave the fantasies in romance novels; they have an addiction to the escape, to the passion that they do not in actuality possess. A million readers of romance novels regularly “consume an astounding 51-100-plus books a year “(171). Like a drug to dull the pain of their lives, these readers attempt to find in these books some hope. “Readers may be saddled with spouses who want different things . . . , and “they are not willing to accept that certain partnerships will never fulfill their needs,” so they turn instead to romance novels “to remain upbeat in the face of perpetual dissatisfaction” (173). Could romance novels actually be dangerous? If they are indeed like drugs, there will never be enough rough-exteriored, tender-inside heroes to help us cross the chasm of need. Americans read about love, Adams and Heath conclude, “because we have so little of it.”

A bleak outlook indeed. Worse yet is the fact that as a nation we are not readers. Only “57 percent of adult Americans say they have read a single book in the past year,” Adams and Heath report (274). If it is true that the bulk of what makes it to the bestsellers’ lists will not engage us intellectually or even spiritually in an honest way, what are we to do to mend what ails us?

Adams and Heath credit Oprah Winfrey with getting a lot of people to read better books. As an English teacher, I too, give Oprah credit for her powerful ability to influence American readers. Still, she cannot do it alone.

And contrary to what some may believe, school teachers cannot either. There is a fragile tension between pushing students too hard to read and not pushing them enough. I teach 9^th graders and I used to assign more whole class novels. As it is the imperative of adolescents to resist and revolt, there were many who did not read the books I chose simply because I chose them. In past years I have instead expected my freshmen to read four books on their own―they choose anything as long as they’re sure their parents would approve. The results are not an illusion. They are reading more these days. But unfortunately, the result of their ability to choose is we’re not talking together about what we read like we did in the past. We only do that a couple of times a year now. So my opportunities to enhance critical reading and thinking skills through whole class novels are fewer. Again, a fragile tension. What is more important? Reading for its own sake or reading and learning to analyze what we read? My ultimate goal is to cultivate life long readers.

I truly believe it is a moral imperative for English teachers to be their own Oprahs. We not only need to be readers ourselves but we need also to talk about what we read (or even Blog about what we read). We should encourage our colleagues to be readers as well. In my early days as an English teacher, I thought it would be interesting for students to find out what their teachers were reading. Our survey was a tremendous disappointment. What we discovered was that the teachers at our school were, by and large, NOT READERS. And what about parents? What are they reading? Is there no time or interest for anything more than the latest issue of People or Sports Illustrated? Even our president is not a reader if we are to believe the current opinion of him. Some have tried to get “us” reading. Chicago Reads was an attempt to get the entire city to read (and talk about) the same book, quite an admirable goal!

We need to be reading and thinking about important books. The how is the hard part. The why seems simpler, and something I have pondered again and again. The question was the basis for a masters thesis I wrote in 2000. Adams and Heath’s book has rekindled those thoughts in me again. I applaud their efforts in Why We Read What We Read. Their book should be required for all serious book clubs. It should be the first book chosen as it will get the members thinking about what they should choose to read. Books that are worthwhile are not always fun and easy; actually, they should not be. The books we need, as Franz Kafka said, “…are the kind that act upon us like a misfortune, that make us suffer like the death of a person we love more than ourselves, that make us feel as though we were on the verge of suicide, or lost in a forest remote from all human habitation–a book should serve as the ax for the frozen sea within us.”

As Adams and Heath point out, “We already have the passion for what [great books] have to offer. We simply need to realize that they are what we have been seeking all along” (277).

Adams, Lisa and John Heath. Why We Read What We Read. Naperville, IL: Sourcebooks, Inc., 2007.