Unread

“MORE KAPAMPANGANS discover joy in reading.”

So was slugged, okay, titled, a recent press release from the Capitol, that went thus:

The Pampanga Provincial Library (PPL) noted that more Kapampangans have apparently discovered joy in reading books, magazines and other materials as it reported an increase in the number of general public which availed themselves of the library’s collections for the first three months of the year.

Provincial Librarian Bessie Makabali reported that a total of 1,333 readers made use of the library’s various collections in January; another 1,208 in February and 1,420 last March.

Makabali attributed this growing interest in reading to the continuous advocacy on the benefits of reading as well as the rich collections of reference and fiction books, newspapers and magazines, government publications and non-book materials in the provincial government’s library which is located at the Capitol compound.

As of March this year, the library boasts of 21,572 grand collections which were purchased from local funds, while some were part of the allocation from the National Library of the Philippines (NLP). Some so-called “Friends of the Library”, both based in the province and foreign countries, also regularly donate books, mostly fiction and general reference…

Honestly, I am more saddened than gladdened by that piece of news.

Considering Pampanga’s over two million population, it is of little consolation to note a three-month aggregate of only 3,961 readers at the provincial library.

Indicted here is the reading deficiency of the Kapampangan. Manifest here is the decreasing literacy rate of our race.    

For one inured in classical studies – thanks to my formative years in the seminary – it is not at all effete snobbery to feel some disdain, at the same time some remorse, over the opportunities – to learn, to know, to be enriched – lost to a mind deprived of reading.

Aye, to character formation itself, where reading is elemental. As Francis Bacon monumentalized in his Of Studies:  

"Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man. And, therefore, if a man writes little, he had needed have a great memory; if he confers little, he had need of a ready wit; and if he read little, he had need of much cunning to seem to know that he knoweth not"

For one in the writing profession, reading is a requirement: even a sine qua non, as a matter of course. Reading for a writer covers not only newspapers, magazines and periodicals, but moreso books – of all kinds, in all subjects. If only to broaden his horizon, if only to expand his mind, if only to increase his vocabulary.

Again, Bacon: “Read not to contradict and confute; nor to believe and take for granted; nor to find talk and discourse; but to weigh and consider. Some books are to be tasted, others to be swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested; that is, some books are to be read only in parts; others to be read, but not curiously; and some few to be read wholly, and with diligence and attention.”

Yes, light reading – novels, literary anthologies – for the senses; high-brow reading – philosophies, histories, sciences – for the intellect.

Aye, in this age of Kindle, Nook eReader, Cybook and Pepper Pad, I still go for the old hard- and soft-covers. There’s nothing more intellectually stimulating to me than the smell of pulp only a book has. It makes understanding of what I am reading deeper, retention in memory more permanent, the imagination more expansive.  

E-books or good old books-in-ink-and-paper though, reading is on sheer joy. There is life in books. There is life to books. Inhering in human life itself.  

Read John Milton in Areopagitica: “Books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them.

Unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book; who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye.

A good book is the precious lifeblood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life.”

Read. It is food for the intellect, nutrient for the soul.