Reading for Others, Part Two
Dear Reader,
Reading for others is, in fact, an essential part of my job. While Part One of this topic explored something of reading for younger readers, with the analogy of previewing a movie, that analogy doesn’t quite land here. In today’s exploration, reading for others isn’t a concern about maturity, and it isn’t even about whether it’s a good read generally speaking.
In today’s piece, reading for others will be incredibly close to recommending a read, a topic of much intrigue that we’ll explore at a later date. Today, we’ll explore two distinct aspects of reading for others. First, reading as a kind of preview, but more as a matter of fittingness for a particular purpose (often learning). And second, reading as a kind altruism, a form of extended friendship.
A decent portion of my reading is done for older students, those in high school and college. This isn’t all bad. I think some intellectual inquiry is the better for having a set purpose behind it. Of course, this means I end up reading things I never would have selected otherwise—for good or ill. It does constrict my own leisure reading, sometimes frustratingly so. But in the main, my intellectual life probably benefits from its odd reading motivations.
When I’m reading for students, I’m trying to find works that will challenge them in specific ways. It can be themes; it can be genres; it can be reading literally anything. Now, that last isn’t quite exact. I get some parameters from them about what their anything looks like, and then I set about finding reading materials that intersect with their interests, as best I can.
To give an example of this, I’ve added a nonfiction book on swimming and a YA novel about a female boxer to my queue. Both of these books are for students. The former as a semi-stretching nonfiction read (one that includes flickers of popular science and memoir) for the swimming nerds among my students, and the YA novel for my more reluctant readers. I have no idea whether either book will be added to my list of resources, but they might. I have books that I’ve used for one student only, and I have other materials that I’ve used with 99% of my students.
(Technically, the above texts would usually be classified as “reading for work.” I hesitate to do so for three reasons. Firstly, no one else does this for my line of work. And it’s so absurdly extra that I’d rather not be like “this is how I’m different,” not least because it sounds insane instead of helpful. (At least, if someone tried explaining that to me, I’d think they were insane.) It is simply not within the job description. Secondly, it isn’t core or central to my job. It’s that I find it valuable for my students and—any student readers, please ignore this part—I care whether my students derive some skill or insights beyond test scores. Thirdly, “reading for work” is not fun reading, to my mind. The aforementioned reads don’t necessarily excite me, but they also aren’t that bad. They definitely aren’t hard. Reading technical manuals on literacy and reading comprehension and mathematics and argumentation theory—those are that bad. Those are like any job’s please-make-it-stop reading.)
Actual Altruism
The above types of reads are done for others, but you still derive some benefit for yourself. You can read an article for your own edification and keep a friend in mind simultaneously. (Order reversible for that last sentence.) And you can read things for others that loosely connect to some sort of remuneration.
Still, there is reading for others that is almost exclusively for them. For a light example, I occasionally spend time sifting through MG and YA literary agent websites that I stumble across when I’m doing adjacent searches. I have zero interest in writing for those genres, or fiction in general. I write nonfiction, thanks. And I don’t even enjoy that. As writing is not my game—I like to read—and kid-lit is definitely not something I’m pursuing outside dumb stories created for nieces and nephews, there is no possible benefit I can derive from scouring the websites of MG and YA literary agents.
So why would I read them? I have several friends who are desperately trying to break into that world. And they are fraught with worry and also pulled in a million “how do I get published?!” directions. (Don’t worry, they are too busy to read this post—see prior sentence.) Aside from the suspicions of one YA-writing friend that perhaps I’m harboring secret dreams of publishing in that genre, when I read things to send them, I am doing a form of altruism. (It isn’t really that, it’s friendship, but in this newsletter I’ll save the discussion of Aristotelian friendships for never.)
If you recall my laudatory review of Courtney Maum’s Before and After the Book Deal in “The Bonus Read,” I picked up that book almost exclusively for my friends, aside from the most minor curiosity of my own. I genuinely didn’t expect to personally benefit from it, and the only reason I did is because of the bonus part, but I picked it up anyway to see if it might be one my writer friends would benefit from.
That example aside, most of my reading for others consists of articles and papers of varying length. It isn’t often that I’ll take on a full book without good reason. I like my friends and all, but not THAT much. So if reading for others sounds exhausting to you—and it would to me, if it demanded that I was always reading books for others—book-length reading is the atypical, not the norm. Much more common is a 500-word ESPN piece or some other such casual read.
Obviously, you have to be careful how you read for others, as it can swiftly turn into reading at others—I well remember the articles my censorious grandmother would clip and send me. And reading for others can quickly get confused with recommending reads to others, not least because there isn’t a firm line of demarcation between recommending reading and reading for others.
Here’s a way you might pick out one of the differences. If you see a book title or article title and think to yourself, “I’ll bet this would benefit Tiffany,” and you send it off to her without reading it yourself, you’re recommending a read. If, however, you read it through yourself first, simply to make certain that it’s truly beneficial, not too long, not something she’d already know, and so forth—then you’re reading for others. As in Part One, you’re previewing the piece. On their behalf. (Not your behalf.)
I’ll be honest, I find this distinction pretty hard to manage. It’s pretty easy to read at others. “I’m just looking out for your best interests” is a nasty little line.
That line isn’t always false, but its hollowness is more common than its valor. When reading for others, you can be doing one of two things: confirming that the piece is worth sharing with them or extracting the essential details of the piece to spare them the necessity of reading it themselves.
I’ve already spent ample time on the first of those things. For the second, once again, this isn’t the CEO or Ivy League read, where what you’re sparing them is being literate. This isn’t about economizing for those who are ducking intellectual honesty or their assigned labors. It’s about extracting information that would benefit someone else, and then sharing it with them. They won’t profess to have read what you shared with them, but they can benefit from that information. And so your reading for others, those otherwise genuinely occupied, helps them with a little tidbit that they wouldn’t have accessed on their own.
You are economizing for them, not to steal away their intellectual labors, but to share in the spirit of friendship. You are offering a summary or paraphrase (or quote!) because they won’t see it otherwise.
For a weak analogy, I found a really good video the other day, one that my sister and brother-in-law would find excellent and possibly therapeutic right now. It’s also 45 minutes long, and they have kids. But the first ten minutes covers what will matter for them, at this moment, and so I can tell them to watch those ten minutes only, if they can. The rest doesn’t even need to wait. It doesn’t exist.
As with all analogies, the above fails because I’m not watching videos for anyone, including myself for necessary research. I spend enough time on a screen right now. I watched that video for my own curiosity, and then found it would be of benefit to them. I don’t altruistically watch things because I don’t enjoy people yapping at me, video or otherwise. But aside from how I ended up watching that video, the way in which I curated it for my much-busier-family is analogous to how one might curate a read for others.
And that, my reader friend, is an intro to reading for others. I trust you found the two posts on it a different kind of adventure than usual. Have you ever read for others? What inspired you? I do hope you found joy in the endeavor.
Happy reading to you,
Kreigh
P.S. A certain librarian had some QUESTIONS about Wednesday’s post. I was not intending to complain about libraries. My intent was the opposite, in fact. I’m apparently quite skilled at paving in the wrong direction.
I think public libraries are the best: my current one much better than my former one that culled Edith Nesbit’s classic work on dragons... I’d not have managed some semi-recent writing shenanigans with some friends were it not for my local library.
For my nieces and nephews, the idea of “a good library book” is intended more as a conversation about the important role of libraries and also a helpful way for them to move beyond a consumerist idea of possessing all the books, guiding them from a Gollum-like attachment to every book. I possibly should have spent more time writing about it; I simply didn’t because it wasn’t central to a discussion of reading, and I didn’t want the sidebar to extend too much. As I leapt over a fair bit of background, I erred in thinking my point was established clearly enough. And for that, I apologize. (This librarian friend and I are in almost perfect accord about the purpose of libraries, extending to their attendant strengths and weaknesses, so that that didn’t come across speaks to my sincere failure.)
P.P.S If you’re slightly interested in chess (or know someone who is!), check out this engaging piece on a tournament that starts this weekend. As a bonus, it’ll prepare you for a future piece in this series where I draw an analogy from chess tournaments.