After Osmosis
Learning lessons at the cosmic casino buffet
A few years ago, I finally found a copy of Gutenberg’s Apprentice by Alix Christie at my local used bookshop.
I try to shop secondhand with books whenever possible because books are expensive (worth it, but expensive), and I like to have my own copy in case necessary highlighting / annotating / underlining crops up. Now, if the book is something I’m truly salivating after – say, the latest Donna Tartt – I’ll cough up the cost of the thing new instead of (im)patiently waiting for a library copy or the inevitable 8-month lead-in until it finally surfaces at Bizarre Bazaar.
And importantly – buying used books is a lesson I’ve had to learn the hard way after more than a few hardback purchases turned out to be just…not good.
(To reiterate: money spent on books – whether they become your new favorites, whether you read them halfway, whether they lie in a pile of their own dust for time immemorial without so much as a page turned – is always money well spent.)
But also, spending nearly $30 on a book that just doesn’t hit isn’t a good feeling.
And thank GOD I learned that lesson before Gutenberg’s Apprentice.
A few weeks back, I wrote about my quest to DNF more books. It’s not that I’ve never DNF’d before; it’s that I’m just really bad at it. I’m getting better, and in my defense, I would like to point to Gutenberg’s Apprentice.
I first spied Gutenberg’s Apprentice in Dublin’s Hodges Figgis.
An aside about Hodges Figgis – that place is like Pleasure Island. Anything looks good off the shelves in Hodges Figgis. Books you’d never had any interest in reading, authors you thought you derided but maybe…not? All of it is fair game as soon as you walk into the ink-and-dust laced atmosphere that is Hodges Figgis.
So, there I was. In Hodges Figgis. One transatlantic move or another looming on the horizon, the maroon-and-gilt dust jacket of Gutenberg’s Apprentice winking at me from on high like some papier fruit of The Tree of Knowledge.
According to the blurb, Gutenberg’s Apprentice had everything. It was historical fiction (check), about a seminal technology that would obliterate social divides (check), reimagining the very fabric of human innovation and involving the timeless struggle of religion v politics (check, check, check). There are few people in the world who would get so jazzed about a historical novel concerning the printing press and I, dear reader, am one.
But, I stayed my hand. For two-ish long years, I stayed my hand, until I unearthed it somewhere in the fiction stacks of my favorite local used bookshop. I bought the book, took it home, cracked the spine…and abandoned it, two weeks later.
I’m sure there are elements of Alix Christie’s style and form that weren’t to my taste, although enough time has passed, I can’t remember what they are. All I can remember is that I was bored.
Bored was a bad word in my house growing up.
If we were bored, we needed to find something to do. Read. Color. Go outside. Play Barbies. Read. (Maybe there’s some kind of subconscious conditioning that keeps me from DNFing books because reading was the solution to boredom – so how could a book bore me?)
But that’s how I’ve felt with most of the books I’ve DNFed – which include:
- Perfume: The Story of a Murderer: A historical novel exploring the experience of smell through the psyche of a twisted mind
- The Four Winds: A historical novel about salt-of-the-earth Elsa Wolcott’s mission to keep her family alive during the Great Depression-slash-Dust Bowl
- [Title Redacted Because There Are a Million Martin Luther Biographies Out There and I Can’t Remember Which One I Tried to Read]: A biography about 16th century German theologian and father of Protestantism, Martin Luther
Just. Bored.
I can get through books with characters I deeply despise. I can get through books with bad writing.
But when a friend pointed out that all of the books I DNF are generally historical in scope, I had to ask myself: maybe I wasn’t interested in reading certain books for entertainment, but that perhaps…I just wanted to learn. About the Dust Bowl. Or theology. Or history.
Generally, I read for FUN. I’ve always read for FUN. And the good thing about reading for FUN, is that a whole lot of other stuff gets uploaded into your grey matter by osmosis. Take the children’s historical fiction series, The Magic Treehouse, in which brother-sister duo Jack and Annie travel through time via said eponymous magical treehouse, solving literary and historical mysteries. TMG was my first exposure to Pompeii, King Arthur’s Round Table, the Titanic.
Or, Scholastic’s Dear America collection, books written as diary entries from the perspective of young women throughout major U.S. historical events, from the Salem Witch Trials to the antebellum South. Beyond learning what a butter churn was or what the average family ate during the Great Depression, I subconsciously absorbed lessons about feminism throughout history, sociology, empathy – the bigger picture perspectives that make reading so critically important.
And a secondary but nonetheless important part of reading as a young person, is that these lessons are (hopefully) continuously being reinforced in a formal school setting.
“Yes, Teacher So-and-So, I know all about the crossing of the Delaware because Jack and Annie tackled that one in Revolutionary War on Wednesday.” History lessons on subjects such as Jim Crow become more poignant, and perhaps longer lasting, if you already have built an emotional base alongside Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry’s Cassie Logan.
All of this to say, my reading began as a dual enterprise: enjoyment and learning. One informed the other, at home, at school. And as someone who can’t. stop. pursuing. graduate. degrees. in. literature., it’s only been very recently in my reading experience that the formalized learning process, this classroom-esque reinforcement and acquisition of knowledge, has stopped.
My on-going mission to spend my time more intentionally this year has helped me watch new movies, create new things, strengthen new friendships.
Before this year, my proverbial brain lunch tray was just kind of catered by content. And I mean, the content is still there. The content is obviously, always, eternally, there. But now, I feel a little bit like I’ve been at some cosmic casino buffet, sampling hashbrowns and miso soup and cheesecake and crab legs (this is not a great metaphor, but bear with me) alongside the filling but not-so-nourishing platters of content.
The great part of this experiment is now. After nearly a quarter of the year practicing this intentionality, I get to decide what tastes best, what’s going to really fill me up. And maybe that’s learning.
Can you remember the last time you learned? Really, purposefully sought out new information just because you had a question, or a curiosity (and I’m not talking about who-played-who in what movie. Because it’s likely Ben Whishaw, and this doesn’t count as learning anyway). Or maybe you aren’t a formalized, classroom learner like me. Maybe for you, it’s travel or the aforementioned osmosis. But as a thought exercise, try to pinpoint it – the last time you followed a deep curiosity about a subject or phenomenon.
I’ve written before about loving school because I want my Good Girl Gold Star. But the more time I spend reflecting inward – reading articles, researching documentaries, taking notes – the more I think that’s only part of the equation. I love school because I love learning, and that’s just how I learn best.
At time of writing, I have no plans to go back to school. That’s not to say I never will, because I’ve broken that promise before (it’s not the worst one to break). But I will focus some of my attention of learning for learning’s sake. YouTube video essays are a good place to start, and there are always avenues like Masterclass should the itch take me.
If there is one lesson we can all take from content, it’s that not everything we consume need have a point, a purpose, a productive outcome. So why not apply that philosophy to sociology lessons instead of haul videos? Why not learn to learn?
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