Swordwriting II-Sharp reading…

The beach was full of people… Everyone was relaxing and enjoying the sand, the sun and the sea. The colorful umbrellas were scattered almost everywhere and the only thing moving, on that hot summer’s day, were a few swimmers, children that played with the wet sand, windsurfers that were looking to put themselves into a fair wind and a few pairs of beach-tennis players (can you see me?…) But the majority, were sitting or lying in the shade while reading books…

Though globalization has transferred cultures and habits to all corners of this earth, it is quite clear, reading habits are different from country to country, from place to place and from person to person… If we put practice aside, reading books is far more important than any other study a person can undergo. There is no school, no education, no degree, no university, no “master”, no doctorate or anything equivalent… that could go above reading books…

It is a fact that countries with higher educational standards, countries that are ahead in what we call civilization, have citizens that are practically reading everywhere they find themselves… in the metro, in cafés, in parks, everywhere. And they don’t wait only to read at the beach…

This summer I was very happy with the reading material that was waiting for me under my umbrella… It’s not always easy to find a satisfying combination of reading stuff, exactly as you want it, exactly at the time you want it. But here I was, after a hard beach-tennis duel, and a short swim with dives to cool it off, I was happily returning to my private shade, to simply do what all folks do… read my stuff!
Now what did I bring with me this time? Oh, yeah… first of all, I managed after a long period of search, to complete the comic-book collection of Lucky Luke… at last I have all of them and now it was time to enjoy them, issue by issue… and while reading them I had to contain myself from bursting into laughter, since this happens a lot with Lucky Luke and I was not exactly alone at the beach… What’s next?! It’s the story and life of the Japanese swordsman Miyamoto Musashi. A book I stumbled on in a bookshop in London last Christmas. Detailed to the extreme, regarding information, it leaves me no choice but use a pencil on it, in order to underline sentences and make useful notes which I will discuss with my students later on… Another one was the biography of the German pilot “Bubi” Hartman (which I also mentioned in a previous text) that was a true eye-opener on History. No doubt, his life was so full, it could easily become a movie scenario… And last but not least, where would I be without my favorite “4wheels” magazine about cars?! Hm… it has a preview of the upcoming car exhibition in Frankfurt…      
  
But what was the menu under other umbrellas!? What is it that people read? It is novels of course… and novels only! Tons of them! Unfortunately novels dominate the scene not only at the beach, but also in the metro, in cafes, in parks, everywhere… Don’t get me wrong here, this is not a critic, it’s an observation. I don’t see novels as a “problem” and I read, of course, novels too. But reading only novels looks like a dead-end doesn’t it? It transforms the act of reading into a “pass-time” activity… Since when do we have time to simply pass (or kill)?! Because, correct me if I’m wrong, I was under the impression that our time is limited, and of value…

A book is like a sword that cuts through ignorance and then becomes part of your knowledge.
But much like some swords, though they appear like swords in every detail, they can’t cut anything, because they are built for “safe” practice only or to be used as decoration on the wall…

November 29, 2009