Kurt R.A. Giambastiani

This past year, I’ve reviewed only three books. There are a couple of reasons for that.

The primary reason is that I’ve been reading a lot more news these days. Current events (and my often visceral reaction to them) have been consuming a great deal of my available attention. A secondary reason is that another main chunk of my reading time has been devoted to research—online and offline—for my work-in-progress, and while some of these research works are very good, they’re not titles that most (or any) of you would find interesting.

Through this, however, I felt the lack of fiction, not only as a needed escape from the real world, but also as part of my education and development as a writer.

With this in mind, last month I decided to devote time to fiction (the first of which resulted in this), and I’ve been continuing that trend by reading Raymond Chandler’s first novel, The Big Sleep.

But this isn’t about that; this is about reading.

Current events and research, for me, is very much an “online” experience. Even with my physical newspapers on the weekend and the old research books I use, there’s still a lot of attendant online searches and fact-finding. Reading online, whether via websites or e-books, is a splintered experience, and even physical books engender side searches and deep dives down virtual rabbit holes.

My fiction has been with physical books, but more importantly, when I sit down with my book, I purposefully leave my tablet and phone across the room, discouraging distraction by texts and notifications.

The result has been a much more immersive reading experience. Once I break the cycle that interrupts my progress to look up a word’s etymology or run down a salient fact, I’m free to ignore distractions, free to enclose my mind in the world of the author’s creation.

The thing is, this used to be the only reading experience, for all of us, and I wonder if those who grew up with e-books (when they read books at all) have ever experienced it. Sure, with discipline, you can achieve the same level of immersion with an e-book, but it’s harder, especially if you’re e-reader is your phone or a tablet, but if you’ve never known the difference, if you don’t know that such an experiential difference exists, why would you try to achieve it? I mean, if you’ve never heard of the wonderful taste combo of tuna and cacao, why would you ever try it?

So this is my goal: to inform those who only read books on their phone or tablet that there might be a different level of experience available to you.

Turn off the TV.

Put down the phone.

Pick up a book.

Dive in.

k