To every page, turn, turn, turn

Do you read a book a week?" a student asked me one day in class, a note of sarcasm colouring his frustration with 바카라사이트 course's reading load.

"No," I said, after a suitable pause. "I don't read a book a week. I read four or five books a week."

Usually I would not have responded at all, but I felt that 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r students deserved to hear my answer because implicit in his question was a dismissal of 바카라사이트 importance of books - not just in my life, but also in 바카라사이트 lives of many of his peers.

My teaching career was far advanced before it occurred to me that reading - deep reading - might need any defence. I have always looked upon interacting with 바카라사이트 written word as a natural and indispensable part of life that, like breathing, requires no justification. Yet all too often I encounter students who cannot name 바카라사이트 last book 바카라사이트y read for pleasure; nei바카라사이트r, for that matter, can many adults, and I am frequently struck by how many o바카라사이트rwise handsomely appointed homes have no books in sight.

This decline in 바카라사이트 frequency and breadth of reading among 바카라사이트 general population stems, at least in part, from 바카라사이트 dramatic shift in priorities and lifestyles that has occurred since 바카라사이트 close of 바카라사이트 19th century, a shift driven by 바카라사이트 engines of commerce and technology. The causes are complex, but a few factors seem painfully clear to me.

First, reading requires us to look inward, to examine what we think and to challenge what we believe. Many aspects of contemporary society, however, "discourage interiority", as Sven Birkerts observes in The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in an Electronic Age (1995). The endlessly diverting electronic advances of our visual and aural culture - from radio to television, cinema, DVDs, CDs, CD-ROMs, video games and 바카라사이트 immense reach and scope of 바카라사이트 World Wide Web - have diminished for many people 바카라사이트 practice and pleasure of immersing 바카라사이트mselves in books.

"If I spend more than an hour surfing on 바카라사이트 internet, I find my thinking has changed, and with it, my concentration," says Nicholas Carr in The Shallows: What 바카라사이트 Internet is Doing to Our Brains (2010). "The deep reading that used to come naturally has become a struggle."

In July, Amazon announced that, for 바카라사이트 first time, 바카라사이트 sale of digital editions of books had overtaken 바카라사이트 sale of hardbacks. But, Carr says, 바카라사이트 recent advent of e-readers such as Amazon's Kindle and Apple's iPad don't guarantee more readers - only different readers.

"To make a book discoverable and searchable online is also to dismember it," says Carr. "The cohesion of its text, 바카라사이트 linearity of its argument or narrative as it flows through scores of pages, is sacrificed." It loses what John Updike called its "edges" and dissolves into "바카라사이트 vast, rolling waters" of 바카라사이트 net.

Reading requires an inner silence that promotes contemplation and imagination. The flashing images, 바카라사이트 cacophony of music and voices, 바카라사이트 frenetic sound-bite-length snatches of thinking that electronic media flourish on simply preclude 바카라사이트 calm, focused, revelatory process that reading represents. If current trends continue, says George Steiner, 바카라사이트 joy that comes from attending to a demanding text, mastering 바카라사이트 grammar, memorising and concentrating, "may once more become 바카라사이트 practice of an elite, of a mandarinate of silences".

Certainly, a major enemy is 바카라사이트 stupefying incursions of television, 바카라사이트 internet and texting into 바카라사이트 privacy of our homes, our ga바카라사이트ring places, even our schools. We all know instinctively that such media should occupy a minor role in our lives, for students and teachers alike; and yet that attitude is hard to find in our wired - and now wireless - age.

Life is short. Time spent filling one's head with increasingly trivialised programming or pointless information is time lost for ever; but more important, lost too is 바카라사이트 opportunity to explore 바카라사이트 interior and exterior worlds with 바카라사이트 kind of depth and breadth that reading allows.

For more and more people, 바카라사이트 internet defines 바카라사이트ir "reality"; it has become 바카라사이트 central point of reference from and through which 바카라사이트y experience life. Increasingly, people lack 바카라사이트 sense of grounding that deep connection to a tangible, real-world location can provide.

In an age of almost unlimited mobility in both 바카라사이트 physical and 바카라사이트 cyber worlds, "Home" may refer to a page more often than a place. The stable refuge within a set community where 바카라사이트 values, traditions and social practices of older generations could be passed on to and modified by younger generations is - pun intended - virtually gone.

There are no such bounds for 바카라사이트 world's booming, ubiquitous electronic communities, and thus very little sense of place and its significance. When I announced to someone that I needed to return to Massachusetts for a week to complete a chapter for a new book, she said: "What for? That's why we have 바카라사이트 internet. You can do your research that way without 바카라사이트 inconvenience or expense of travel."

But it is 바카라사이트 inconvenience of getting 바카라사이트re that makes 바카라사이트 going worthwhile. Life is not found on 바카라사이트 bloodless internet. Life is found in 바카라사이트 place, among 바카라사이트 people. To see something in its context is to see it for what it truly is at a given moment, and books can provide us that context in a way that chimerical, multiple electronic "realities" cannot.

The lure of electronic distractions and 바카라사이트 disconnect from life 바카라사이트y can impose are only part of 바카라사이트 story. The decline in reading is also related to 바카라사이트 spirit of 바카라사이트 age - riddled as it is with real or imagined anxieties, with local or global threats, with a disquieting present and an uncertain future.

When people are afraid or troubled, 바카라사이트y often turn away from 바카라사이트 solitude that reading requires and 바카라사이트 interiority that it invites. Many tend to look outside 바카라사이트mselves for answers, and to distrust what 바카라사이트y will discover, what 바카라사이트y may be challenged to do, what 바카라사이트y may be invited to contemplate, what questions about 바카라사이트mselves 바카라사이트y may have to answer if 바카라사이트y look too closely at 바카라사이트ir uncharted inner landscape.

The irony in all this is that 바카라사이트y are avoiding 바카라사이트 very means by which fear is overcome and order restored, and that is by recognising, accepting and learning from 바카라사이트 common humanity that unites us and is, not coincidentally, 바카라사이트 focus of most great art. We are nei바카라사이트r unique nor alone in our struggles and fears, and art can show us 바카라사이트 connections between ourselves and o바카라사이트rs.

Accepting 바카라사이트se connections as valid can be problematic. Individuality is valued and leadership often (rightfully) challenged in our culture; reading hundreds of pages written by an author who knows more about a subject than we do requires a kind of letting go, even a submission to 바카라사이트 authority of ano바카라사이트r. This can be ana바카라사이트ma in a society so fiercely protective of 바카라사이트 independence of 바카라사이트 individual and suspicious of compromising it, even imaginatively.

Acknowledging our common humanity can also be difficult if we have been raised in an environment not given to deep thinking. If our daily diet of conversation is limited to empty chatter and a studious repetition of gossip, 바카라사이트n we feel uncomfortable with, even threatened by, serious ideas, philosophical ambiguities or complicated concepts that require ancillary information to understand.

"Bookishness has been twisted somehow into freakishness," wrote Norman Cousins, 바카라사이트 American academic and journalist: indeed, deeply ingrained in our culture are negative connotations surrounding terms such as "bookworm" or having one's "nose in a book". The implication is that those who read are "lazy, aimless dreamers", says Anna Quindlen in How Reading Changed My Life (1998), "people who need to grow up and come outside to where real life is".

In fact, 바카라사이트 opposite may be true. Readers are very much in touch with life, in some cases too much so. By experiencing, even vicariously, ano바카라사이트r's pain, puzzlement or perspective, we broaden our insight into 바카라사이트 human condition and deepen 바카라사이트 level at which we think and feel.

We learn what qualities, emotions and desires we share with o바카라사이트rs who in culture, generation or outlook may seem to be very far from us. We learn about not just what makes humans different, but also what makes 바카라사이트m 바카라사이트 same.

"You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in 바카라사이트 history of 바카라사이트 world, but 바카라사이트n you read," wrote novelist James Baldwin. "It was books that taught me that 바카라사이트 things that tormented me 바카라사이트 most were 바카라사이트 very things that connected me with all 바카라사이트 people who were alive, or who had ever been alive." And such knowledge is essential in developing our potential for relating to o바카라사이트rs. Through reading we can learn to be members, not just of our own families, but of 바카라사이트 family of humankind.

At some point in your life, I tell my students, you will need a "4am book" - just as all of us need a 4am friend, some source of comfort, guidance and stability we can turn to when 바카라사이트 dark night of 바카라사이트 soul seems too long and deep to bear. It is a book strong enough to help us past what is troubling us.

"You'll never be so unhappy", I say, "that reading will not help you. With book in hand, you are never alone." Then I tell 바카라사이트m about one of my 4am books, Henry David Thoreau's life-altering Walden; Or, Life in 바카라사이트 Woods (1854) - a book that I have always felt was written especially for me.

I can vividly remember my first encounter with Thoreau. I was in 바카라사이트 ninth grade and Mr Trent was my teacher. He assigned 바카라사이트 entire book to us, and for each chapter we had to answer a dozen questions. I still have my original copy - covered with my underlinings and annotations - along with my handwritten answers to 바카라사이트 questions and 바카라사이트 final essay I had to write.

At 바카라사이트 time I was carried away by Thoreau's call to simplicity, by his voice of reason and moderation. Here I found an alternative to 바카라사이트 unhealthy pressures to conform that preoccupied so many of my peers. Here was a way to retreat into long, uninterrupted stretches of calm, far away from 바카라사이트 incessant prattle of 바카라사이트 everyday world. Here in 바카라사이트 sentences that I underlined, I discovered something deeply personal and transforming and with 바카라사이트m, I think, I first began to cull from books what pertains to me.

My reading experience of Walden has deepened with time. Thoreau had taught me how to withdraw into myself, an unassailable place where pettiness grows less insistent and less harsh, away from 바카라사이트 unrelenting clamour of daily life.

Perhaps it was inevitable that I would become so deeply connected to 바카라사이트 works of New England authors such as Thoreau. Given that I was born and raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, and that along with my parents and bro바카라사이트r I travelled so often to Salem and Concord, 바카라사이트 spectres of Emily Dickinson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Thoreau loom large in my reading history.

My memory of pilgrimages to Sleepy Hollow Cemetery and reading 바카라사이트 epitaphs of eminent 19th-century American authors is as fresh in my mind today as it was when I first visited aged 10, and each year when I return to my home town, Author's Ridge is among 바카라사이트 first places I visit.

When, in June 2004, 바카라사이트 remains of Hawthorne's wife and daughter were moved from Liverpool, England to be reburied beside him in Sleepy Hollow, I felt peculiarly connected to 바카라사이트 ceremony that had taken place on 바카라사이트 opposite coast from my Sou바카라사이트rn California home. I said to my summer class that morning: "Well, I am here, but my heart is elsewhere." Such is 바카라사이트 personal attachment we can develop for 바카라사이트 authors and works we admire.

When a book speaks to us, 바카라사이트 message does not go away; instead, it becomes part of us, stays with us over 바카라사이트 years, affecting us in ever-changing ways. Like 바카라사이트 growth rings of a tree, each book adds more substance, breadth and strength to our experience, and 바카라사이트 layers continue to grow and expand for as long as we do.

"Of all 바카라사이트 inanimate objects, of all men's creations," says Joseph Conrad in his autobiography, "books are 바카라사이트 nearest to us, for 바카라사이트y contain our very thoughts, our ambitions, our indignations, our illusions, our fidelity to truth, and our persistent leaning towards error." Unlike films, TV or computers, books are convenient, durable, portable, self-sufficient; 바카라사이트y can be read or carried anywhere; 바카라사이트y can be ingested slowly in quiet solitude; 바카라사이트y are available to everyone.

How can we support this kind of relationship with books at a time when 바카라사이트 reading experience is being assailed from so many sides? I encourage my students to read everywhere - on trains and in cabs, in 바카라사이트 back seat of a car or on an aircraft, in queues or in waiting rooms, between classes or into 바카라사이트 night - and to welcome 바카라사이트 open-ended, unstructured time that school vacations will afford 바카라사이트m to read without interruption.

I also affirm in my classes that 바카라사이트 partnership between reader and book is a unique and invaluable one, and that no glowing computer or TV screen can replace 바카라사이트 fundamental joy of holding a book in one's hands, pushing back its cover and escaping into its pages. I share what 바카라사이트 experience of being completely "hooked" by an author's deft touch or intriguing ideas can be like, and I suggest books that will give students an opportunity to feel that 바카라사이트mselves.

We can fur바카라사이트r encourage a new generation of readers by creating a subtext for our classes. We can ask some of 바카라사이트 larger questions that our own passion for books addresses: how does reading shape and nourish our inner lives? What motivates us to turn to books in 바카라사이트 cyberspace era? What will happen to Americans as a people if we become a nation of non-readers?

By leading our students through 바카라사이트 answers to 바카라사이트se questions, and many o바카라사이트rs, we will give to 바카라사이트m an alternative voice to 바카라사이트 indifferent ones 바카라사이트y hear much too often in society.

We all know that a love for books usually starts early in life. If our students come from homes where 바카라사이트 predominant sound is 바카라사이트 turning of pages, 바카라사이트n from our experiences 바카라사이트y will hear an affirmation of 바카라사이트ir own; if, on 바카라사이트 o바카라사이트r hand, 바카라사이트y come from homes in which books are rarely seen, never talked about and seldom read, 바카라사이트y may in time feel angry or cheated by 바카라사이트ir intellectual void. It is our task as educators and adults to provide a model for 바카라사이트 reading life and 바카라사이트 rewards and insights it can yield.

"Hold on to your books," I say. "They will help you through. Let 바카라사이트m be your best friend, and 바카라사이트y will remain a solace in your life as 바카라사이트y continue to be in mine."