David L. Ulin

This book was a random impulse selection at the library. I know, I've been trying not to check out anything but graphic novels as I already have too much to read at home, but this tiny volume was hardly intimidating, and it felt familiar, as if I'd read about it somewhere and intended to read it, so home with me it went.

It's clear that this book is deeply personal to the author. Framed around an interaction with his son, repeatedly referencing books that were clearly touchstones in his life show more (many of which I'd never heard of before), his subject matter is still somehow universal and easily relatable -- at least to devoted readers like myself. Well, at least, I guess, to myself. Some conversations with other devoted readers sparked by the reading of this book made it clear that not all felt the same. I guess I should feel lucky that I found myself on such a similar wavelength to the author.

The section of the book I found most interesting was when Ulin was writing about the problem of reading -- of fully immersing oneself in a book -- in this distracted age of Facebook and texting and instant communication. As I read, I was deeply struck by the contrast of my experience reading this book with reading The President just a few short weeks ago. After such a long period of mostly reading books in short bursts -- two to three pages at a time, while the majority of my reading was in shorter form -- magazines, internet articles, Facebook statuses... By the time I had that entire afternoon to devote to The President, I'd fallen entirely out of the habit of sustained, immersive reading. And that frustrating experience closely mirrored Ulin's descriptions in this section. But in the following weeks, I'd spent so much more time reading books -- I must have retrained my brain, because that afternoon in the park when I read most of this book, it was suddenly obvious how much easier it was to just fall into a book. It seemed a testament to the elasticity of the brain and of experience. And a hopeful sign that this empathic experience that is at the heart of reading novels, biographies, essays, need not be completely lost to this digital age. It just takes a little practice. show less

Several years ago I read a wonderful book, Distraction, by the philosopher and author Damon Young. His book describes the success of several great thinkers and writers in living a thoughtful life filled with freedom from distraction. One of the hallmarks of the lives he described was reading. It is this act, which David Ulin describes as "an act of resistance in a landscape of distraction, a matter of engagement in a society that seems to want nothing more than for us to disengage"(p show more 150).

This observation is near the end of Ulin's essay on why books matter, The Lost Art of Reading. Some of us have not lost the art, but may need a reminder of its importance. For reading is more than entertainment, although it often is entertaining; it may also be invigorating, meditative, or even a spiritual life enhancing experience. Above all, as Ulin argues, it is a way to get in touch with ourselves in this instant as we connect with the thoughts of authors that may have lived millenniums ago. That connection is one that can be experienced reading authors as disparate as Dostoevsky, Milton, or Murakami. It has often been referred to as "The Great Conversation".

The essay focuses on reading a through a variety of metaphors. Reading is "a journey of discovery"(p 13). The journey is different for each individual but one example highlighted by the author resonated with me. It was the immersion of Frank Conroy in books when he was a boy.His journey began with what seems a chaotic passage through book and authors both great and small, heavy and light, but it was a start and a wonderful way for Conroy to get the lay of the land. To enter into a world that would provide him with a place that was apart from the distraction of society became a foundation on which he could build his own life as a writer.

David Ulin remembers his own library of books as a " virtual city, a litropolis, in which the further you were from the axis, the less essential a story you had to tell.(p 17). It was this view of books as a city that he translated later into remembering cities by their books and populating his reading life with a vision of the world based on his own tastes and aspirations. This is something that each of us as readers may do in our own life. The essay takes you through encounters with readers like Ulin's own son, who has to read and reluctantly annotate Fitzgerald's Great Gatsby, with the encouragement of his father. But he also discusses writers like Anne Fadiman who is among the greatest connoisseurs of reading and writing that I have encountered. And we are regaled with a story about reading David Foster Wallace, a contemporary writer of revolutionary tomes. There is even a discussion about reading on a Kindle which is not necessarily a bad thing except there are a lot of worthwhile books that are not available on a Kindle, so the book is safe for the moment.

As a reader I found this essay encouraging and invigorating. It is a reminder of what I love about reading, what I would love to reread, and where I may go to continue my own journey. Just as I enjoy the freedom from distraction that reading can bring, I wonder at the infinite worlds that are opened when we take time to get in touch with ourselves in the pages of a book. I hope for a future that includes many things, but above all reading. Listen to the words of Walt Whitman:

"SHUT not your doors to me proud libraries,
For that which was lacking on all your well-fill'd shelves, yet
needed most, I bring,
Forth from the war emerging, a book I have made,
The words of my book nothing, the drift of it every thing,
A book separate, not link'd with the rest nor felt by the intellect,
But you ye untold latencies will thrill to every page." show less

3.5 stars really but thus is the failure of any rating system. This book was somewhat abstract from the title but yet still true to it. A couple memorable lines:

"I think in pages, not in screens" (when talking about e-readers). This is the sentence I've been searching for that describes my own apathy towards e-readers.

"Facebook, with its flow of useless particularity, makes it impossible to forget, thus impossible to remember." (the author quoting Rich Cohen)

That last line is worth dwelling show more on, it very well sums up Facebook. show less

Disappointing essays on what Los Angeles is becoming in the 2010 years. I was really looking forward to reading this book as Ulin had earlier edited a literary anthology on writings about LA. This book rehashes older themes of the City of Los Angeles as constantly engaged in erasing and recreating itself. Destroying and putting up a false front for others to imagine ourselves as something preferable to what we are not. The essays get more tedious as the pages turn. This book seems like it show more was written to flatter all Ulin friends who he has dinner conversations with. That's the level creative thought you find here. Ulin does spend some time talking about developer Rick Caruso, who is a Catholic and philanthropist and his ideas about public and private spaces. Ulin gets everything wrong about what Caruso tries to accomplish but that just shows how deeply influenced by failed liberal city planners Ulin is.
Ulin is a New Yorker who has lived in LA for much of his adult life so he does speak with some authority about historical change in the area but he is also quick to dismiss much about which is singular to Los Angeles. He says, "...in New York, we take urbanity for granted,whereas in Los Angeles, we are still learning its vernacular." That may be true but you don't need New York to conceive of what Los Angeles actually is. The city is much newer that New York but grew independently of what happened on the east coast. Ulin wants to force a similar development of Los Angeles from that already undergone by New York. All New Yorkers want that, just like the English want New York to be London. Who cares? Different strokes for different folks. This book is frustrating since it's resigned to LA being a New York copy, a fake copy that all of New York can laugh at. I'll keep this book since I consider it my hobby to see what is written about Los Angeles, but you don't have to waste time reading it. show less