The Solitary Vice: Against Reading

The Solitary Vice: Against Reading by Mikita Brottman starts with some provocative questions:  What if reading isn't as important as we're led to believe?   What if reading doesn't make you a better person?   Is it "Cool 2 Read," is reading "Fundamental," is it necessary to "Get Real @ The Library"?  Brottman bristles at slogans like this and questions whether forcing reading on people is a good thing.  She believes reading can in fact be a uniquely valuable activity, but it's all in how you do it: read what excites you, read what helps you grow.  Don't read the classics if they bore you (watch a movie version instead).

The "anti-reading" provocation is only the hook for Brottman's book.  The remainder is a reading memoir.  Brottman shows by example the value she found by reading in genres that are normally looked down upon -- celebrity biography, true crime, comics.  She teaches literature and knows her way around the classics and literary theory, yet she also knows much about the different ways that people learn and think.  Brottman is not so much against reading as against the simplistic rhetoric and elitism that surrounds it.  I liked this book for taking a more subtle stance than most debaters in the perennial "is reading dead?" discussions.

Mikita Brottman has a website with more about the book and her other writing.