Maine Crime Writers

I recently read an article about how high school kids were no longer being assigned full books to read, just snippets. Reasons ranged from “you just can’t get young people to read anything long” to whatever entity that’s dictating curriculum is not putting books on the menu. Whatever the reason, it bothered me. First of all, how are you supposed to appreciate a book by reading one chapter of it, rather than the whole thing? As an author, I find that insulting.

Second of all, of course, is the most obvious thing: Future generations just aren’t going to read books or think reading an entire book is important or necessary.

The more I thought about it, though, the less dire it seemed. I thought back to my old high school days — reading a Dorothy Sayers book in my lap as some poor kid slogged out loud through “The Pearl” or whatever book we were reading at the time. I don’t know whose idea it was to spend entire high school English classes having kids read aloud, but it was a pointless exercise. Listening to other kids stumble through a book wasn’t getting me anywhere. I know that we did more than that in English class, but it’s one of my major memories. I always had a book I was reading for pleasure with me, and that was my go-to when things got dull. Not just in English class, either. I’m not recommending this, by the way. My high school grades could’ve been a lot better.

The point is that, while I did read the assigned books in high school, that’s not where my book-reading habits began. I can probably list many of the books I was assigned to read in high school, but the ones I read on my own those same years made a much bigger impression. If high school is where the latest Gen’s book-reading habits are starting, yeah, they’re probably not going to be reading a lot of books going forward.

My sister Liz, with a book of course, around age 10.

I don’t have to tell you — loving books and reading them is a habit that starts years before high school. If there are books in the house, if the kids are read to, if they see the adults reading books, if it’s business as usual that books are something to value and reading is something to do and enjoy, that’s how it starts. That’s the house I grew up in, and I bet that most of you reading this did, too.

I also don’t remember a lot of vetting what we read. Once we could get to the library ourselves, Mom and Dad weren’t checking what we read or forbidding certain books. Part of it was that they were wicked busy. It was also the 70s, and they just weren’t paying that much attention to the little details of our daily lives. I also don’t think it would’ve occurred to them. That’s big, too. We could decide on our own what to read. It not only makes reading more personal and fun, but it’s a great way to develop critical thinking skills [another thing that’s going by the wayside, and also a blog post for another day]. We read all the time and our books were all over the house. If we were kicked outside becaues it was a nice day [do parents still do that?], books would often go with us. I can remember being a young teen and sitting in a corner reading a book on a hot summer day in one of the cool hallways of the State House in Augusta, a few blocks from where we lived.

By the time I was around 10 and my older sister, Liz, was 11, we were watching the younger ones if my Mom had to go out for some reason. This was before she went back to work full-time. We didn’t get paid, but I do remember her giving us “The Phantom Tollbooth,” by Norton Juster, as compensation one of the first times we had babysitting duty. That book was passed around among us, read by most of my siblings, and referenced frequently. I’m sure that once in a while, one of my siblings or I will still point out that if you try to jump to the Island of Conclusions, you’re going to get wet. There were many books like that, that we’d all read and they’d become part of our kids’ language.

I still have my beloved and battered copy of “The Making of the President 1968,” which I read several times as a teenager.

By the time I was a freshman in high school, my mom was working at Mr. Paperback in Augusta. Between that and Lithgow Library, I had a nonstop source of books. Mysteries were my go-to, but I’d also developed a weird obsession with politics and burned through all of Theodore H. White’s “Making of the President” books. I probably read the 1968 one four or five times.

I was a big fan of NBC News journalist Edwin Newman, who wrote a book “Strictly Speaking: Will America Be the Death of English?” I had a paperback copy of it and when I was 15, actually wrote him a fan letter and included a clipping of a newspaper story in which Gov. James Longley used a tortured metaphor about football to explain something. I don’t have the clipping, and it was 1976, so never had a copy of my letter. But imagine my surprise when a month or so later, I got a return letter from Newman! Completely with his own proofreading correction mark. I had totally forgotten about it until this summer, when I was going through an old box of stuff in a closet and found it.

Yes, I was a weird kid. Books didn’t make me any less weird, but I don’t think they made me any weirder, either. In fact, I can’t think of a better outlet for weird kids everywhere. Weird kids who read books end up becoming authors, or even doing things that can change the world.

Back to the point. It IS disappointing if it’s true that high school kids are so disinterested in reading an entire book that teachers have giving up making them try to. But by the time a kid is in high school, they’re either going to like books or they’re not.

Three generations of my family catch up on their reading while waiting for dinner during a family camping trip at Baxter State Park a few years ago.

Frequently when I’m behind my author table at some event, a person will come up to me and proudly announce, “I don’t read books.” [Why? Who knows. That’s yet another post for another day.] Or, when I launch my pitch opening, “Do you like mysteries?” they’ll shake their head and say “I don’t read.” No matter which it is, my response is always, “That’s too bad.”

It IS too bad. How lucky are we that we love books? I can’t imagine life without them. Books have been a source of joy and comfort for me even before I could read. I feel bad for people who don’t have that.

The same day I read the article about high school teachers not assigning entire books, I had a table at the Bangor Author’s Fair and Literary Festival. For more than five hours, a steady stream of readers, of all ages, fiilled the room I was in. Gee, looks like there are still people who like books enough to come out on a cold day and check out an event that has nothing but authors and their books.

The Maine Crime Writers & Friends tree at this year’s Augusta Elks Festival of Trees.

I also, for the fourth year in a row, had the honor of setting up the Maine Crime Writers tree at the Augusta Elks Festival of Trees earlier this month. We had more than 50 books underneath it, many donated by writers on this blog [thanks guys!] and our other Maine author friends. While I was setting it up, one of the women who runs the event told me how thrilled they are with our tree. How great it is that we do it every year. It’s one of the most  popular trees at the festival! A little while later, her husband found me wandering around, and thanked me, too. Profusely. He couldn’t say enough about how great it is that we gather all these books and do a tree. Seriously! This is an event with a tree that has nothing on it but lottery scratch tickets [my personal favorite]. Yet, they’re so excited about the tree with all the books. I’m just the one who sets it up — it’s the fantastic group of authors and our community who make it happen.

It’s obvious that there are still people who read books and value them.

As we Maine Crime Writers are fond of saying, books make great gifts! Even more than books, though, the love of them and of reading them is one of the best gifts you can give. Happy holidays to all!

Don’t forget! One lucky Maine Crime Writers reader who leaves a comment on the blog this month will win a bag of books!