The Joy...and Danger...of Reading

As my regular readers know, I love to read. At any given time, I'm reading at least two different books: one during the morning and evening commute, and one for the dining table, nightstand, and bathroom (well, I'm just sitting there...might as well read). This love of reading and learning was a major gift from my mother, and I've tried to pass it on to my children and grandchildren.

Have you ever read aloud to a child, or just for your own pleasure? Some books have wonderful passages made for reading aloud (read the description of the Rohirrim's charge across the Pellenor fields in J.R.R. Tolkien's The Return of the King, and compare your mental picture to the same scene in the movie), and there are many wonderful poems that beg to be read aloud (Ernest Thayer's Casey at the Bat and Robert W. Service's The Cremation of Sam McGee are classic examples). Reading, aloud or to yourself, is one of the great pleasures of life.

With this in mind, I was depressed by an article in this past Sunday's Washington Post titled "Harry Potter and the Death of Reading" (read it at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/ 2007/07/13/AR2007071301730.html), which lamented the modern American tendency to read nothing but major bestsellers, if that, at the expense of history, literature, or other important books. In the interest of full disclosure, yes, I will be in the heaving throng at my local bookstore this coming Saturday to get my copy of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, but I also spend a lot of time reading other things...a quick look at my "favorite books" section of my blog profile will give you an idea how wide my interests are.

I think it's depressing that many children (and most adults) know every detail of popular TV shows, but don't read. If I were to give you one piece of advice, it would be this: read everything you can get your hands on, and use the knowledge you gain to inform your opinions. As I've said before, don't ever let anyone do your thinking for you.

On a related topic, the online version of the German news magazine Der Spiegel ran an article yesterday titled "Should Germany Republish "Mein Kampf"? The first question, given the theme of this post, is: do you know what "Mein Kampf" is? If not, you need to know that this was the book written by Adolf Hitler that outlined his sick and twisted political and racial philosophies, and previewed the horror of World War II, concentration camps, and genocide. The title translates as "My Struggle." The German State of Bavaria owns the rights to the book, and has not permitted it to be published in Germany (for fairly obvious reasons); however, the copyright expires in 2015, and many Germans are wringing their intellectual hands over whether or not it should be available in their country once it is in the public domain.

I say, go ahead and publish it. I tried to read it in English translation many years ago, and found it so dense and poorly written, full of anti-Semitic drivel and convoluted, cockamamie political rants that I never made it all the way through. What I was able to read in German was even worse. So, go ahead and publish it...let people see for themselves how screwed up Adolf Hitler was, and how much misery his debased ideas brought to the world. It's available around the world and online, anyhow.

By the way, it should come as no surprise that "Mein Kampf" is a bestseller in much of the Muslim world, where the translated title is Jihad.

Combined with the utter lack of independent thinking and inquiry in Muslim lands, that's pretty scary.

Have a good day. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo