READING A GOOD BOOK!

Monday, June 1st, 2026

Baton Rouge, Louisiana

 

 

READING A GOOD BOOK!

 

     June has always been my special month to read extensively. No how to, general information, politics, or any other type of practical knowledge reading. It’s always been fiction. Off to summer digs at Gulf Shores, with nothing more to do than fishing, swimming in the ocean (before the sharks came), and going through a stack full of novels I had saved  in the previous months.

 

     Americans are reading less and less, and it has become a disturbing trend. The average reader claims to have read only two books this past year. One in four adults say they have read no books at all. Book sales are flat throughout the country, and with some exceptions, independent bookstores are becoming more and more a thing of the past.

 

There was some good news in a new poll released last week. People in the south read a little more than those from other regions, mostly religious books and romance novels. Democrats read a little more than Republicans but not by much. And surprisingly, surveys show that those who say they never attend religious services read now twice as many books as those who attend frequently.

 

I guess you can blame both television and the Internet. But we also do not seem to get away enough. I am surprised at the number of my own friends who don’t take off with their family for several weeks like we traditionally did in the past. And when we do, there are the proverbial companions including our cell phone, iPad, and laptop. Distractions galore that do not lend oneself to curl up with a good book.

 

I will give it my best shot on a number of hot June nights, and hope to  complete my eight novels specifically set aside. Next on my list is James Lee Burke’s, “The Tin Roof Blowdown,” that my friends who have read it say was the first important novel to come out of the ruins of Hurricane Katrina. Burke has always been a reliable witness in the maelstrom of the modern American South.  Most of his works are located in New Orleans and south Louisiana. He says plaintively that “the New Orleans I knew is gone forever, and its destruction is a harbinger of what’s ahead for the nation. If they want to see the future of this country, come visit Louisiana.” Disturbing. Really disturbing. It’s at the top of my list on my nightstand.

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Another in my stack is “Fly Fishing Through the Midlife Crisis.” I’ve read it before. But it is a book I reread every few years. Author Howell Raines gives his own middle age experiences that will resonate to any guy who is aging, been through a divorce, deals with the growth of his children and the death of friends, mentors and relatives. I’ve lost a number of friends and mentors in the past year. I passed my midlife crisis (on several occasions) but there are lessons remembered here.

 

And finally, “Little Cowboy Poetry.” I used to want to have a ranch with horses and plenty of cows. I never did, but I’ve always enjoyed a number of irreverent cowboy poets like Baxter Black and Ross Knox. Poets who write about cowboys generally focus on the ordinary stuff of life, but there are some genuine truths here with some poems that are primitive and funny that intersperse truths that are no less eternal.

 

The vacation thing has got to be revisited. For me at least, the days spent on the seashore, looking through a box of books have always been as pleasant and fulfilling, if not more so, than most of the better things that I have experienced. And there are more good books to add to my list that seem to come out every week.

 

As an accommodation to making a living, I will always throw a laptop in the car and have a cell phone somewhere around. But I will do my best to make these items secondary to the fiction and other works I’ve enjoyed for so many years in the past and hopefully, for many years to come.  Let me end with a quote from popular science fiction writer Ray Bradbury

 

“You don’t have to burn books to destroy a culture.
Just get people to stop reading them.”

 

_____

 

Peace and Justice

 

Jim Brown

 

 

Jim Brown’s syndicated column appears each week in numerous newspapers throughout the nation and on websites worldwide. You can read all his past columns and see continuing updates at http://www.jimbrownla.com