"Small have continuous plodders won
Save base authority from others' books"
--William Shakespeare, Love's Labour's Lost (Act 1, Scene1)
When Shakespeare wrote that line, he argues that people who do nothing but read (plodders) only learn what other people tell them, rather than thinking for themselves.
Now grant you, I don't have anything against reading. When I was younger I devoured books. I worked in libraries for years and fantasized that one day a book I wrote would be in one. But a some point in my life I stopped reading books. It kind of started when I switched from reading physical books and started reading on a Kindle. Or maybe it started when I got my first satellite dish and started streaming endless streams of crap television. Eventually I stopped reading books even when I commuted (and switched to watching TikTok videos of cat's being introduced to aluminum foil). The pandemic ended even the sporadic reading I did on commutes. And now I only read things on screens.
The reason for this post (other than finding an excuse to post an image of me as Shakespeare, who BTW, really just wrote for people to view his works as plays, not read) was a trip to Barnes and Noble with my school librarian wife yesterday so she could return some books. As I waited for her I scanned the row after row of books carefully displayed in what I'm sure are professionally curated fashions to maximize impulse purchases. There were a multitude of biographies, autobiographies, and best sellers with flashy covers emblazoned with bold headlines: SOON TO BE A MAJOR MOTION PICTURE! And there were a plethora of self-help books (the ones I detest the most) screaming how they would change your life and make you stop trying to please other and do what is best for you (which is ironic coming from a stranger who is only writing about what theoretically worked for their unique life and wouldn't necessarily apply to yours). And there were umpteen classic books with flashy new covers to maximize profits and push sales based on people's guilt over never having read those great books (that really weren't all that great and would sit on their bookshelves unread except by guests who were supposed to be impressed by their high-brow library).
Barnes and Noble was packed to the gills with people browsing and sipping Starbucks while they desperately browsed for an escape from the world, mass media and very likely their mundane selves. Because what is more fascinating then the biography or autobiography of a 23-year old former Disney child star who lived on the streets and now works in a flower warehouse in San Francisco?
My epiphone was that I stopped reading not because I no longer liked reading, but I stopped reading because I gave up on self-help books decades ago, realized I didn't need to read about famous people's destructive habits (at least pay to read about them) and could do research and learn much more from ChatGPT (with a grain of salt) than I ever would from the hyper-marketed books at Barnes and Noble.
I was disgusted that there were also still multitudes of what we used to refer to as Harlequin Romances on display, still flashing long-haired, muscular and bare chested men embracing swooning women. The market is still there even with the books on display within steps of books about women's rights.
Hypocrisy abounded in the displays at Barnes and Noble. And I also have to admit that I was just a smidgeon jealous and deflated that none of the books on display were written by me. But I quickly overcame that emotion as I realized that even if a book I wrote were there, it would be sitting there screaming loudly at passersby to "buy me" masked by the voices of the thousands of other obscure books screaming for attention (kind of like my blog has for almost 22 years).
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