MJ and I went to the Festival of Books today at USC (otherwise known as "Bookchella" in contrast to the more well-know and more frequented counterpart Coachella) and I couldn't help but ask myself, "do people in Los Angeles read books?" Anecdotal evidence up until now has pointed to the contrary. I saw a college-aged student sitting on the lawn at USC reading a book and I thought, "wow, not in my 3 years of law school did I ever stop and notice anyone doing the prototypical image of reading a book on the lawn of a college campus."
I may be prejudiced, but I do think that people in Los Angeles read less than in other areas of the country. It seems pretty obvious to me: beautiful weather, never rains or snows, beautiful scenery from beaches to mountains, stuff to do like surfing, hiking, running, etc......who has time for reading? Other factors include entertainment being dominated by the music and movie/television scene with all the major studios in town as well as wannabe actors/ musicians, etc., novelists tend to be from some rustic, austere locations like grape country in New Hampshire, etc. At least, that's what I gather from reading the About the Author sections in the cover of books at Barnes and Noble. There's only so much free time in one's life, and in LA there's just so much more to do to occupy that free time, whereas one good rainfall/blizzard in other cities will render 80% of possibilities impossible and make reading become a priority. One of my strongest memories of reading books is curling up after a long day of skiing/being outside in the cold to a book and delving deep into another world, forgetting the present and disregarding what the weather is outside. It's pretty hard to disregard the outside weather when everyone seems to be having fun outside, you know your friends are outside doing something,
Superficiality: It's also much more important in this city to look good more than anything (might be true to differing extents in other cities, too) so much more is paid attention to shops and malls and making oneself look good. I just thought it might be the people who happen to live in LA before but I think a city does have its own culture, its own style of living.........and it doesn't have much to do with books.
LA also seems like a very young people-friendly town, or at least it seems that way. Lots of young people in their 20s-30s move here, or so it seems (I don't blame them), and that's the age group, I feel, that's least likely to read. Children read children's books to learn, teens read classics because they're assigned to them by schools, older people read in book clubs, are wise, and have less options for going outdoors, etc.but young working adults? Not really, they're more focused on living life to its fullest! Hence, coachella. Books don't give the vibe of living life to its fullest (although, they can be!) Social media even purposely mocks people who give too long of responses with "TL;DR" (too long, did not read) or say that someone has "just written a book" in a negative sense.
There's also the whole transportation affect: the commute consists primarily of driving one's car, which is a pretty big deterrent to reading any material. Sure there's audiobooks nowadays, but even as a pretty enthusiastic reader (self-identifying) I find the audiobooks to be too slow and inflexible in terms of going back to a certain passage or re-reading a page when my mind goes blank for a few paragraphs. Other cities have plenty of people in trains and buses reading books; I've seen them with my very own eyes! They do exist! Whereas even in trains in LA people are just trying to get through their day without homeless people getting too close to them. Major problem in LA: smelly trains that don't go to enough places, never get washed, and even relatively new trains like the Expo Line get inundated with homeless people who make the ride experience unbearable to sit and breathe, much less get too into a book (I've tried it, it's rather jarring to get pulled away from a nice passage in a book to have to look up in fear of one's life at a guy cursing and screaming).
Anyway, heard Roxanne Gay talk about feminism and her books about feminism. Really funny author, it's people like her that made reading fun for me, and why I might just get back into reading yet. I used to think about why people put "I read 50 books a year" in their bios like it was an accomplishment, now I'm understanding how much of a commitment that really is, unless it's like picture books or young adult fiction or something. And maybe, just maybe, authors like her will get people in LA to go to Bookchella more than Coachella.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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