Today is September 11. A day that will never be forgotten. Booking Through Thursday’s topic is in deference to the horrible acts of that day:
Terrorists aren’t just movie villains any more. Do real-world catastrophes such as 9/11 (and the bombs in Madrid, and the ones in London, and the war in Darfur, and … really, all the human-driven, mass loss-of-life events) affect what you choose to read? Personally, I used to enjoy reading Tom Clancy, but haven’t been able to stomach his fight-terrorist kinds of books since.
And, does the reality of that kind of heartless, vicious attack–which happen on smaller scales ALL the time–change the way you feel about villains in the books you read? Are they scarier? Or more two-dimensional and cookie-cutter in the face of the things you see on the news?
They are interesting questions that I can’t quite answer. However, I can say that the events of September 11 do color the way I read. For example, reading about the culture in The Kite Runner and how they were treated when they came to the U.S. made me think twice before evaluating someone based on religion or skin color, knowing the atrocities that they had endured before choosing to come here to the U.S.
Books are more than just words on a page. They are feelings, expressions, history. So I will often choose to read a book — either realistic fiction like The Kite Runner, or a memoir from someone’s who’s been there. It opens my eyes. It lets me understand or at least feel something.
And that’s the beautiful life of a reader.
Managing Editor Jennifer Donovan is a contributing editor at 5 Minutes for Mom. She has been blogging at Snapshot for over two years. You’ll almost always find her holding either a book, a fork, a child’s hand, her laptop, or some combination therein.
Although I have read The Kite Runner, I truly do not need it to remind me how some people are treated becos of their skin olour, religion and beliefs.
Well, I am the one person in the world who has not read it.
However, my reading habits have been adjusted because of the horror of 9/11.
An eloquent answer. Thank you.
I haven’t read it either, but I’ve come across many books where people were treated poorly or as inferior due to their race or religion. Then again, I’m not much for those kinds of books. 🙂
Haven’t read The Kite Runner yet, even though I’ve heard so many good things about it. I’m very guilty of reading mostly for entertainment and escape – that was true before 9/11 and I guess it’s still true.
I completely agree – I purposefully chose today to review a book called Laughing Without an Accent by Firoozeh Dumas, an Iranian American’s memoir which is really about how we are more the same than we are different.
Here’s the review: http://www.skrishnasbooks.com/2008/09/laughing-without-accent-firoozeh-dumas.html
I have to say, books on terrorism would probably not interest me moreso now after becoming a mother, and yet books like The Kite Runner probably interest me more now after 9/11. It’s becoming more obvious how important it is to be aware of other cultures and understand them.
I so agree with you. I was lucky enough to see a lecture by the author of the Kite Runner, and he is such a nice man..and funny. It gives a whole other prespective when we read about different lifestyles, etc. and also, no, we in the US don’t understand terrorism the same way as others do.
I like memoirs or realistic fiction, too, for insight.
The answer that today’s question provokes is one of the reasons why I have put off reading The Kite Runner. I have mixed feelings about the whole racial profiling which is being enacted after the attack, in a very subdued manner.
It’s funny, when I first read the question I couldn’t figure out how 9/11 could affect anyone’s reading. However reading others answers has made me really think. Still, it hasn’t affected my reading. You can read more here.