TeaThat accident happened without warning during the holidays. The culprit: an Airbnb bedside table with no power outlet. A minor inconvenience causes the mobile phone to be placed in another room for the night on the last breath of ions.
As I lay in bed, desperately trying to stop the wild surge of my thoughts, it happens: I reach over and Picked up a book.
The growing anxiety of missing out on global breaking news, or not getting through all the reels my wife sent me, slowly began to loosen its grip on my synapses, as the sentences on the pages turned into paragraphs that soon became chapters. My goldfish-trained brain, accustomed to the mindless jolt of short-form calorie-zero videos as an official wind-down technique, suddenly felt calm as it put together a single connected thought on paper. Peace descended.
I slept through it that night, something I hadn’t done in a long time. Now, months later I have never found the phone back near the bed.
However the downside of this new leaf was that he was turning into the worst kind of book reader – a born-again book reader.
“Books! Have you tried reading books!” “You should really try reading books…” I preach. Knowing that this evolution of life is turning me into the bibliophile equivalent of a vegetarian on the yoga mat, I have since been glad to know that I am far from being alone.
I’ve seen headlines screaming that book festivals are the new phenomenon. Wishful thinking on the part of a bunch of idiots, I thought. But as it turns out, reading books and sharing that experience collectively has never been better than it is today. At least in this part of the world.
Recent Auckland Writers Festival The highest attendance ever recorded, breaking all records in its 27-year history. The crowd was 15% larger than last year as people enthusiastically gathered and lined up for sessions and autographs.
Australia has also seen a huge surge in books. Reflecting (and naturally invigorating) Auckland. Sydney Writers Festival With record attendance and ticket sales, this year was declared the most successful event in its 29-year history.
So what is it that’s driving people back to wood pulp and ink? Are book readers the vanguard of a human response to the AI slope online is providing us with rapidly diminishing returns? Or perhaps a successful group simply scrolled to the end of the Internet and decided there was more to life, and “more to life” was Patrick Raden Keefe’s book?
And what does the surge in collectivism say about us? What is it about book reading, traditionally a solitary act, that inspires us to brave public transportation and sacrifice sacred weekends to come together and often bask in the glow of a well-written treatise with the author?
On the surface, this is a strange concept, given that the attendees have generally read the book, the author has obviously written the book, and now everyone is sitting in the theater celebrating their personal accomplishment. Still, these get-togethers are working, bringing new layers to the simple reading experience.
When it comes to book clubs, I’ve always considered them primarily an excuse to drink alcohol. There was once a major (by New Zealand standards) disturbance outside our house at midnight, only to be informed the next morning by security that it was a local book club’s Christmas celebration, who decided to sing in praise of my wife outside our gate on the way home. I imagined him causing this urban melee with a copy of Miranda July’s All Force tucked under his arm. Absolute view.
Now I admit that none of this properly explains why people are increasingly reveling in this togetherness of breathing the same air as other bookish types. But I wonder whether these events might be timid re-entry into public socialization after the shelter-in-place Covid years kept us physically apart?
Maybe these bookfests are gateway gatherings for people who hand-cuff a vinyl outfit and sweat at 130 bpm for six hours on a dark, bustling, rotating dancefloor to obscure German techno once again. Or, maybe, it’s just my new book-expanded imagination throwing out a sentence that was too long, as it explores its entire new expanded potential.
