Reading Aesthetic adventure or a tedious bore?

Amalshan GUNERATHNE

When growing up, the magical worlds of Hans Christian Anderson, thrilling escapades of J R R Tolkien, riveting fantasy stories of C S Lewis, fairy tales of Brothers Grimm, exhilarating adventures of Mark Twain’s Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Fin used to mesmerize and enthrall us in a manner, that as we got trapped amid their magical content, the sense of time vanished in to mystical oblivion.

We did not feel the need to seek-out any other form of entertainment. As we delved deeper in to the story, the adventure, excitement and the thrill used to engage us in a manner that we rushed through the story at a canter. Such was the joy of investing yourselves in a storybook that it is possible to get lost amid its thrill and lose your senses from the real world.

Purpose of reading

But as the innovations of modern technological wonders continue to devour the teen world, the appetite and hunger towards conventional leisure time activities such as reading among youth has begun to subside. Charles Dickens’s Oliver Twist, Tale of Two Cities and David Copperfield have become obsolete literary material which only literature students study. For the sake of getting through an exam, the teens would go through the book, but what purpose does that serve one could always wonder.

Not only does it defeat the purpose of reading, but also does a great injustice to the original writer who crafted the book. The books are meant to be enjoyed and cherished by those who read them, and if you find reading to be tedious and do it for the sake of getting through a literature exam, there is almost no point reading it. As a voracious reader, fourteen year old Pamuditha Weerakon noted, “I do read a lot and I do that because I like it. There is no point in torturing yourself to read something which you do not like. If you do not like reading and do not enjoy what you read, there is no point in investing so much of your time in it. You have to find the content that you like and enjoy what you read.”

Foster reading habits

That being said, it is also case of kids no longer being provided with necessary exposure to the world of literature and story telling at a very young age. Instead of paperback books, the kids nowadays grow up with Facebook and other virtual gimmicks. The results being that kids no longer have the aesthetic capacity to enjoy a good work of literature, and have now begun to consider reading as a tedious, tiresome process.

As the popular Sri Lankan writer and translator Anula de Silva said in an interview with Daily News, “Reading is something that you have to practise from a young age. When kids start reading, they need someone to guide them. And they like listening to stories. We need to narrate them with interesting stories and get their attention so that they would be interested in reading other books. Parents play a major role in this. You have to build that culture at your home. But these days’ parents are too busy with their own lives that they do not spend enough time with kids.”

Times have changed

Times have changed. It is no longer the eighteenth century that we live in. The books are no longer the only means of entertainment that are available for teens. Therefore one cannot just take away the leisure time activities and hobbies that the kids are used to and force them into reading either. As seasoned children’s books writer and illustrator, Sybil Weththasinghe eloquently said in an interview with Daily News, “Our fantasy world is different from today’s children’s fantasy world. These days, children’s fantasy world is filled with stories about Spiderman, Batman and Harry Potter. Our childhood stories were filled with fairy tales. But things have changed with time. But you cannot restrict children from being addicted to them. It is the present times.”

Yes, pundits would proclaim and hide in the consolation that the print media will never run in to extinction, but no research or scientific studies are needed to prove that reading habits among youth is dying down to a great extent, and that internet, film media, video games and other such forms of high-tech entertainment forms have had an adverse effect on their hunger towards productive leisure time activities such as reading. As fifteen year old, teen, Raveeshya Premathilake admitted, “True I used to read a lot. But after I got my computer, the habit has died down to a great extent. I got my computer as a gift, after I got through my scholarship exams. I was once a voracious reader, but somehow computer has taken away the time I used to spend on reading.”

Books are always better

Having said all of that, you could say J K Rowling’s Harry Potter series, Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy and C S Lewis’s Narnia series have not lost their charm and still do draw teens and kids towards reading.

But with film version of the stories providing them with the same story with better visuals, the teens sometimes do not feel the need to invest their efforts in the printed version. Why read, when we can watch the movie version and get a taste of the same story, they would say.

That being said, only a person who has invested himself in both paperback and film versions would know which one is better. As it often turns out, the printed version is always better, since it draws you in to the story and emotionally engages you with its characters and the world in a manner that no other medium could. Also as it turns out, the film version often fail to deliver and recreate the same fascinating world that we imagined in the printed version, thus failing to live up to the standards set by the writer.