7 Reasons Why We Should* Taco Bout Books
Sometimes I have reading fantasies. There’s this one where I’m next to a crackling wood fireplace. I got fuzzy slippers on. I’m drinking espresso. I’m in a comfy chair with a cat on my lap. There’s a lamp in the background. The whole room is basically a tracksuit and everything is soft and still.
1. Because reading lets you get outside of your own head. When you taco bout books, you develop compassion for the characters within the book. That compassion stays with you.
2. Because reading connects you with everyone else who’s read the same book. You and all the other readers are in on the secret. And the conversation goes something like this, “You’ve read Talking To Strangers? Me too! Let’s taco bout it!”
3. Because if we have any lingering negative association with reading, maybe we shouldn’t take our education so seriously. School needs a dash of salt upon reflection. It literally needs seasoning. The western tradition is the Polish food of literature. It’s whiter than mayonnaise on Wonderbread. This eurocentricity is reinforced through the cannon. In our first eighteen years of literacy and in a very state-mandated way, the cannon is the script the teachers have to follow. What I’m saying is that curriculum is a motherfucker and we need to transcend it.
4. Because if everything on the syllabus reinforces your family values, customs, perspective, etc… you are in an echo chamber. If you are culturally inside of the cannon, with some effort, you can shoot yourself out of it. Taco-ing bout books can get you in touch with your inner Evel Knievel.
5. Because reading requires contemplative thought, which is basically a vegetable for your brain.
6. Because reading is a dope ass way to travel. You can travel through space to different locations, but you can also travel through time and see how previous generations shaped their outlooks. Conrad’s Heart of Darkness could definitely be seen as a commentary on gentrification. Families being pushed out of neighborhoods due to rising property value and income inequality is essentially the 2019 sequel to colonization. I wouldn’t actually recommend anybody read Heart of Darkness, but if you did, you’d get context for what Airbnb is doing to The Bywater in New Orleans.
7. You’ve probably seen the Mark Twain quote, “A person who won’t read has no advantage over one who can’t read.” First of all, sick burn Samuel Langhorne Clemens. Also, dope as rap name. Is it chill if I call you Horn for short from now on? Word. So Horn, your spicy clap back is basically saying that people who read are better than people who don’t, right? I could argue more people are reading now than ever. If we include scroll holes within the definition of reading, people can’t stop reading in 2019. Reading has become ubiquitous. People compulsively read while waiting in line at the post office. People want to read so much, they try to read while driving a car at eighty miles an hour. So if Old Hornslice is right with his sick burn, everything is totally chill. Cause we are reading a bunch. Like a lot a lot. I do think it’s important to actually choose what we read though. I’m going to go out on a should limb here and say we should be deliberate about the texts we choose to experience. Our personal library doesn’t have to be curated by algorithms.
*I don’t mean to should all over you. Shoulding all over someone is when you impale them with imperative sentences. For example starting a conversation by saying, “You know what you should do?” is a request to should all over someone. Often the speaker grants themselves permission to begin should-ing before an answer is given. The follow up of the bullshoulder sounds something like, “You should… “ And then some random ass unwelcome advice spews forth. This can also be called mansplaining.