20140813.0730

I sometimes attend to things before working on this webspace...

My work as a freelance writer continues, fortunately. Among the many tasks I do in that regard is write up books, reading through them as I am trained to do and providing reviews, summaries, and analyses of them. It is work to which I am well suited, and it pays well enough per the book written up, so I find that I enjoy it a fair bit as a working person. I also enjoy it as a reader, not only because it represents a way for me to get paid to read (which delights me), but also because it pushes me to read outside what I would normally read.

This is not to say, of course, that I do not "sully" myself with "low" reading. I have given evidence in this webspace that I read webcomics, comedy websites, and genre fiction, none of which carries any particular prestige in the academy or the prevailing cultural threads at work in the United States. More, I have directly engaged them (and will again; I have a book on order that I will read and comment upon, although perhaps the comments will be in another venue than this). And I do so in my scholarship, so that I am not exercising a guilty pleasure in doing so; I am not "slumming" in them, but celebrate them and embrace them.

Even so, my readings tend to be along certain lines. I do read quite a bit in the canon, yes, and I do read quite a bit of scholarship (when I remember to do so). But my pop culture readings have not typically run to police procedurals, detective fiction, and young-adult texts--not because of disdain (as anything that gets people reading has to count in some way as a social good) but because of non-contact. Aside from coursework, I have not often run into said genres; I spend my (too little discretionary) money on the things I enjoy most. It is sensible, I think, that I do so.

The freelancing work has obliged me to broaden my readings. Doing so has the effect of making me more aware of what is going on outside the section of the world I normally occupy, the basement or lobby of the ivory tower. It helps attune me to what folks who "really" work for a living read (when they read fiction) and what they give to their children--whom I will meet in the years to come. Thus I have some insight into who and what they are, for the choices people make about entertainment are suggestive of their personae. The stories are more than just stories.

I am reminded of the value of outside study once again, not just for those who have degrees in languages, but for all. Doing the reading that others do offers insight into those others. Insight into those others helps promote mutual understanding. Mutual understanding helps reduce problems. Reducing problems is a good thing. Or so I have been led to believe...