It happened, like so many good things do, when I wasn’t even looking for it. Scrolling through the Honors courses offered for Fall Semester 2017, one caught my eye: The Culture of Books and Reading. A bookworm since I was born, I was already intrigued. I was less than halfway through the course description by the time I’d made up my mind to register. It sounded like a course designed with me in mind. I went in expecting to talk about books and how they’ve changed over hundreds of years, but figured we would mainly focus on the e-book revolution. I entered with a fairly ethnocentric idea of what we would be discussing, as well as Western-dominated views of the culture surrounding written words. There’s nothing inherently wrong with my first idea, and it makes sense when I reflect on where I’ve come from and traveled to. Luckily, I took this class and opened up my worldview.
We started the semester by giving a short presentation on an assigned country to the rest of the class. I was assigned Vietnam, a country which I knew absolutely nothing about. But what I learned through working on my own assignment, and listening to my classmates’, was that reading is a universal activity, and so many similarities can be seen around the globe.
The rest of the course turned that upside down in some ways.
Early in the semester, we focused on the psychology behind storytelling – something we have been compelled to do since the beginning of the human race – and the e-reader revolution. This section was more along the lines of what I had expected to be doing in the class. Even during this time, however, we were consistently reminded – either by Kevin or other classmates – that the Kindle revolution really focuses on the Western world’s desire for an e-reader, and its reception of an e-reader. As Americans invented the Kindle, this is not surprising, but it was a view I hadn’t considered before. In my mind, books were books. We also read a book entitled Room to Read, and that’s the one that opened my eyes the most to other countries. It reminded me that wanting to move up in society is a universal desire, and it’s almost universally known that education and literacy are the best ways to get there. What differs is the approach. Some countries don’t want to educate women, or only give opportunities to a select group of citizens; some countries believe in censorship; every country has experienced some form of book burning; the written word can be, and often is, seen as dangerous. This is valid – books and newspapers have been used to spark revolutions and uprisings, and knowledge itself is power. I still don’t believe in censorship, and I think the burning of books as “dangerous material” is wrong, but this class at least forced me to examine why countries take action against certain writings. On the flip side, there are people willing to go to extreme lengths to save written documents. This was most evident while watching a documentary about Timbuktu, where families would take drastic measures to keep pages of their family heritage that had been passed down for generations. The papers were so old they couldn’t be read, but they were still transported during moves and hidden in times of war.
Learning about the Eastern hemisphere was the most eye-opening for me. I know next to nothing about that side of the planet, particularly when it comes to reading habits, so attempting to understand the culture there was interesting and challenging. It’s easy to say that pieces of culture there (such as censorship and education policies) are flat-out wrong. While I still think some of it is, I was challenged to understand why I think that. And, to what extend do I, someone who has never traveled outside the Western hemisphere and who has grown up in America, get to judge what another country has decided, without even attempting to understand the reasons? This a theme we kept coming back to, and I’m grateful for that. It’s a difficult concept to grapple with, but it is an important one.
Our largest project was interviewing international students or faculty here at UC about their reading habits. Pieces of this assignment were difficult, but I was able to draw interesting conclusions, the most surprising of which revolved around visiting libraries in elementary school. Consciously, of course, I knew that going to the library as a child is not something everyone experiences, as not everyone has access to education or parents that value reading. Subconsciously, though, I presumed this was a basic life staple, particularly for students privileged enough to attend university in another country. A handful of participants stated they didn’t use libraries until college, a finding that simultaneously surprised and saddened me, as I remember how much I looked forward to library trips. However, this also stems from my own Western experience. Going to a library and reading physical books is not the only way to experience stories, to learn, and to expand a child’s imagination. While it is still an effective approach, this course helped me realize there’s so many ways to reach that end goal.
This class allowed me to spend a few hours every week learning about books, talking about books, and dissecting books (metaphorically and literally) with likeminded people, something I loved. But it also helped me to realize that this universal experience isn’t so universal, after all. What stories a country promotes, how it approaches books, and the dominating culture of the written word bind us to our past but also allow us to step into the future, and the country one is born into has a big influence on that. Going forward, this class is going to continue compelling me to think deeper about books. I love them, but I loved them on the surface level, and never gave much thought to their worldwide celebrity status. Now, I better understand that there isn’t a right way to read – just read. I’ll probably always prefer a physical book over its virtual counterpart, but that doesn’t make the virtual one any less of a book. People half a world away will experience reading, and all of its components, differently, but that doesn’t mean what we take away from it will be all that different. I’m excited to visit other countries, in either hemisphere, and see how my view of books has changed since this course, as well as feeling slightly more equipped to understand and apply my knowledge. Books will keep evolving as we do, because as humans, we are addicted to story in any form.
Our craftiest project, and second-largest overall, was the construction of a miniature book. The hinges (our hard covers) were provided, but we were to choose the cover material, end papers, and have both a proper title page and colophon (which tells readers the typeset, where the book was printed, etc.). It was also supposed to have text, of our choosing, and match the dimensions of the hinges while allowing them to close and look neat. Whew! It was a LOT of measuring, but I am so happy with how mine turned out. I chose a passage from Edge of Eternity, part of Ken Follett's Century trilogy.
Read the final draft of my international reading habits analysis, our biggest project and my biggest challenge, here: