As I’ve had new books turning up at my door every day during lockdown, I decided a “lockdown reading habits” article was in order.
Here are two huge reading revelations, followed by three reading habits.
Huge reading revelation number one: we need to stop making Amazon a monopoly
Amazon’s great for books and next day delivery. They did, however, suffer for a while near beginning of lockdown and it was hard to get next day delivery on anything but essential items (whatever that means), and even then you’d likely have to wait at least a week.
One week Amazon stated that books were an essential item (agree) because many in lockdown would be bored, isolated, and lonely. Books are education and entertainment. Then the next week they decided books were no longer essential items and good luck getting them to deliver a book to your door in a time-frame less than a week or two.
Amazon allegedly has a long history of unfair employment practices, is allegedly notoriously stingy with its partners and affiliates, and allegedly quite aggressive at evading tax laws (not my words, just what I read in the news). On top of that, they could be accused of censoring free speech in the form of stopping certain books and films from being published on their platform.
Some will argue that as a private company, Amazon has discretion over who they wish to platform and de-platform. This same argument takes place with YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter. The counterargument to that is that when a private company becomes a monopoly on the level of a governmental body, they have a right to act in the public’s interest. When there are no other options available, they can no longer act as a private SME.
BUT – there are other options available, right? True Amazon’s all-encompassing dominance of not only the book but several other markets has resulted in high-street stores closing down, but we do still have choices. I initially turned to Book Depository. Then I found out Amazon had acquired it.
Now, I do love my Prime membership, and Amazon certainly is easy, but I’ve noticed my mindset and spending habits HAVE changed over the course of lockdown.
I want to support local and independent businesses
I’ve stopped going to large supermarket chains (like Tesco), as I found the quality of the food and what I’m paying for, in addition to the personable service I get, is better at the local greengrocer, the local butcher, the local cheese shop, and the local wine store.
I know the butchers now, and we have deep chats about the cuts of meat they have in each week. I know the Italian owners of my local patisserie, and I love supporting their homemade confectionary. I know the man who owns the wine store and gives me great recommendations personalised to my taste. Last time I went to Tesco, and multiple times before that, I was scorned by fellow store patrons and workers. Treated like shit. Well, my money has to go on food anyway – so I’ll support a smaller company that gives me better service. And guess what? I don’t mind if it costs a little extra. Because service and person-ability is built into the cost.
I’ve decided that whilst I will still use Amazon (hey, I’m not perfect) and that the company does do many things right (got to cut them some slack, they are good), I will be supporting small and independent bookstores more from now on. Even if they aren’t open yet. I’d much rather pick out a mom-and-pop bookstore that I know really cares about their industry and keep them alive.
Huge reading revelation number two: ebooks suck, paper is king
I love what a positive environmental effect lockdown has created.
So it’s a shame that I’ve come to the conclusion that cutting down trees is preferable for books to e-ink and handheld devices with backlights and thousands of digital volumes in the cloud.
I fully support initiatives that plant more trees than are cut down, and aim to create my own charity aimed at supporting sustainable education and book production. But I gotta say, I know that ebook sales have gone up (and, incidentally, audiobook sales have dropped) since lockdown because people can’t go to bookstores and can’t get quick delivery.
Sure, it’s convenient to immediately have the content at your fingertips, but so what? Does that make it better?
Where has our patience gone?
How have we so absolutely lost the art and pleasure of waiting?
We’re just binge this, binge that, like the whole human race is one big sprint towards the prize-less finish line.
Anticipating feels good.
When you finally get a book in your hands, after waiting weeks, you appreciate it to much more. I like my Kindle. But I like my stack of real paper and hardbacks on my bedside even more.
I love the smell of real books. I love the weight and feel, the silk of different papers, in my hands. I liken it to the tactile pleasures of vinyl. I love scribbling in the margins. I love gifting someone a personal copy and say, ‘Hey, check this book out.’ Nothing will beat paperback for me. Call me a dinosaur, but the institution of paper and printed word is one to which I will fervently cling.
New reading habit adopted in lockdown: reading poetry aloud in front of a camera
A gorgeous copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass turned up at my door. I so wanted to find a great narrator and listen to the lilt of the words in my ear as my eye lovingly caressed the page. THAT’S how you read poetry. You feel it on your tongue, or someone else’s tongue. I found a narrator, but barely ten seconds had passed before I said, ‘Nope!’ The narrator sucked.
And I thought – if I’m going to read this poem aloud myself, properly, the way I want it to be read, the way I know it should be read, then I might as well film and record myself.
Since then, I’ve read A LOT of poetry out-loud. I either read it in bed to my girlfriend (because I’m a romantic like that) or I turn on the camera and film myself reading.
I get so much more pleasure from poetry when I read it aloud. And, although I’m doing this poetry reading project primarily for myself, I truly hope some fellow lovers of poetry find these videos and enjoy them, perhaps even being inspired enough to do their own readings. We need a community!
The last few months have been so crazy, and the only thing that has consistently calmed me down, like popping a benzo, has been reading poetry.
Here are a few poetry-reading projects I would love to complete, and am working towards completing:
- Reading the whole of Robert Browning’s Men and Women (1855) – that’s 51 beautiful poems like this one
- Reading as much of John Keats as I want (which is basically everything), like this one
- Reading and analysing my favourite Shakespearean sonnets, like these ones
- Reading Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’ from Leaves of Grass (1855)
New reading habit adopted in lockdown: tackling big books
You always put off the big books that you know you should read.
There’ll come a time, you tell yourself, when you’ll have enough leisure to really enjoy Anna Karenina, War and Peace, Les Misérables, Moby Dick, Crime and Punishment The Iliad, Atlas Shrugged, Infinite Jest, the Bible.
Well, the time is now. Lockdown has been the perfect time, the perfect environment, the perfect instigation, for anything you want to do. And, for me, that meant getting acquainted with some of the best long literature.
New reading habit adopted in lockdown: magazine and paper bingeing
There’s not been a huge amount to do in lockdown. So whenever I’d go to the local shop, I found myself grabbing whatever looked interesting.
I’ve got a Saturday morning routine where I go through a stack of magazines and papers with a coffee. I like The Spectator and National Geographic the most. Reading Harper’s even resulted in me submitting a short story to the Raymond Carver competition.
I’ve found that magazines, generally, aren’t that great. A dream, one I’ll likely never pursue hard enough to bring into reality, is to create a literary magazine actually worth reading. But perhaps the heyday Golden Age of magazine fiction is long gone. What do you think?