Reading Books

A few Sundays ago I heard on Sunday Morning that 1 in 4 people did not read a book last year. One quarter of us didn't read a book. Okay, so I know the deal with statistics. They can really mean anything. Maybe those people only read magazines, or newspapers. Maybe they couldn't read (a horrifying thought, although, to be fair, some of our non-readers are under the age of 5 or so, and can most likely be excused on that basis.) Or maybe they, like a young woman I overheard years ago on a college campus, know how to read, but just don't want to. None of those options seem that great though.

You've probably guessed that I'm one of the rest of us who did read a book. In fact, I probably picked up the slack for several hundred of the non-book readers. I love books and if faced with a stack of them, will at the very least glance through them, if not actually read several. Almost against my will, I found myself at this summer's book free-for-nobody, the release party of the last Harry Potter book and stayed up until 3am to buy a book I could have gotten up and purchased the same morning at 8am with no waiting.

If desperate I'll read ten year old Good Housekeeping magazines. Cover to cover. I find that I do have limits though, although you wouldn't know that if you'd seen me dozing on the floor of the local Borders at 1am. This summer I found myself in the emergency room waiting area, my elderly father-in-law having needed an emergency visit. The waiting room was okay. The temperature wasn't stifling, the light was natural and the chairs weren't plastic, but they had about six magazines, and two of those were Car & Driver, one was a children's magazine, and the others were ancient Parent magazines. Apparently, all appearances to the contrary, I won't read absolutely anything. I draw the line at smoking cessation pamphlets and Car & Driver. Good for me.

The nature of a visit to the emergency room is that you aren't usually expecting to go to one, so I hadn't exactly come prepared to spend more than four hours in a room with 15 strangers, 25 chairs, a TV tuned to NASCAR, apparently permanently, and six magazines. Where were all the Women's Days and Good Housekeepings with the recipes torn out? Where were the Highlights? Where were the Better Homes and Gardens, the Wisconsin Women and the dry but serviceable Health magazines?

After more than an hour and a half of withdrawal, I left the emergency room to search the rest of the hospital. It was Sunday, and nobody goes to the hospital on Sunday (at least not anybody other than the 15 people accompanying the emergency room guests) so I had the halls to myself. Finally, about 4 sitting areas later, I found the mother lode. A cache of Architectural Digests and Home and Garden (to which Better Homes and Gardens aspires but does compare) in the surgery waiting room. And better yet, my competition was one woman, knitting and watching NASCAR.

I picked up a handful, as casually as I could, almost cringing at the thought of being caught liberating better quality magazines, and carried them down to the ER waiting room, stopping only to pay an exorbitant amount for a Diet Coke and a Snickers from a vending machine (because nobody eats in a hospital on Sunday either - well - I take that back - I could have chosen from several very well wrapped but distinctly tired looking sandwiches, apples that screamed to be released from their misery or some cereal in a covered bowl. The Snickers I knew would be exactly what I expected, the other items would certainly fail to live up to even my lowest expectations.)

Wouldn't you know it? Shortly after returning with my stolen stash, I was released from Waiting Room Hell, for a short time, and was then faced with a new dilemma. Did I leave my treasure on the tables for others to share? This was certainly more democratic and a certain justification for having stolen them in the first place. In fact, I remember feeling distinctly noble, like I was bringing good decorating to the masses. But I also knew that as soon as I left them they were fair game, and when I came back they might very well be clutched in some other hapless soul's thirsty grip. What to do. What to do.

Finally I did the only thing I was capable of doing. I put down the ones I'd already looked at, reluctantly, and tucked the one I hadn't read yet in my bag, promising myself that I'd come back and give it to the room when I returned, but rationalizing that I really had to keep something against another possible long spell in WRH. Of course, you know what happened. That night, at home, I pulled the poor magazine, boldly emblazoned with one of those bright orange "Waiting Room Copy" stickers, out of my bag, and realized that I am the reason there are no decent magazines in hospital emergency room waiting rooms.

Of course, by now, you're probably wondering what the hell this has to do with art. I mean, I did promise I'd talk about art. And this is probably wandering dangerously close to "hairball" territory, but I do have an art related theme to inject here.

As I was saying, after I heard the dismal 25% non book reading statistic, I thought, well, what do we do with all the books? I mean, we write them, we publish them, we try to sell them, we put them in libraries, and 25% of the people (and I suspect this is a growing number) don't read them. What then, do we do with all those books?

And being an artist, I began to think about some potential uses. Of course, immediately I thought about the standards (in my house at least) of coasters, end tables and presses for bills that have been soaked in water. But those really aren't that creative, they're just natural progressions. Glenn uses them for a combination sleep aid/alarm clock. He goes to bed, opens his book to read, falls asleep after three pages and then wakes up again when he drops the book on his face. This is a pretty versatile system, because it works just about anywhere, including the couch, an easy chair or the car (passenger seat of course.)

A local bookstore uses them for wallpaper, and I've seen advertisements for hardcover books sold by the yard for people who have libraries with empty shelves and no time to buy books they actually plan to read to put on them.

Still, this doesn't enter the world of art just yet. One group that has made the leap are the altered book artists. They use books as the canvas for their painting and collage efforts and end up with beautiful pieces. To see some of that go to www.alteredbookartists.com or www.art-e-zine.co.uk or just google "altered books".

And just as I was really getting into thinking about what one could do with books, build a shed, insulate your basement, make flip-flops, I ran across the latest Mary Engelbreight's Home Companion (Oct/Nov 07) with an article on folding the pages of a book to make an oddly beautiful paper sculpture. Now we're getting somewhere!

So anyway, I'm going to work on some of my book ideas and post them here.

PS: This one has nothing to do with books: I just like it. I'm working on a series of photographs of Wisconsin's capital building as reflected in the windows and reflective surfaces of the buildings around it. I took this one yesterday. I like how clean and huge the reflection is. I tried for a more complete shot of the building but would have had to stand in the middle of the pretty busy six lane East Washington Ave. and I am not crazy.