Summer Junk Food for the Mind

Where do you stand on junk reading?  I go back and forth.  For years I have alternated "quality" literature--like deep spiritual inquiries, riveting memoirs, biographies and histories and prize-winning novels--with "beach" reading like science fiction, fantasy, mysteries, thrillers and the occasional better written romance (only the Highlander series comes to mind).  As I move from the former to the latter I tell myself that I need a break.  I need not to have to work so hard at my reading.  But do I (need a break, have to work hard)? Is that actually true?

After recently completing the awe-inspiring Just Mercy by Bryan Stevenson, I realized that my relationship with junk reading is eerily similar to my relationship with junk food.  I have trained myself to think that there's something I deserve or need about junk food and junk reading, but it's a lie.  Our culture is full of stories of the person who is forcing themselves to eat kale, quinoa and tofu and then escapes into the true pleasures of a burger, fries and a milkshake.  

Believe me my brain is very much capable of enjoying a burger, fries and a milkshake, possibly several of them.  But is my body?  see my body reliably has strong negative health reactions (stomach trouble, headaches, sinus infections and uncontrollable cravings) to beef, wheat, dairy and sugar;  so is it really "enjoying" the burger and milkshake? or is just enjoying the idea of the burger and milkshake, the cultural concept of taking a break from what you should do, having a treat?  If the tofu is crunchy and salty, the kale is properly flavored and quinoa is marinated, I can eat a meal that my mind AND body fully enjoy.


It's the same, I realized, with literature.  There was NO way that I had to work to "get through" Just Mercy.  It was a treat from beginning to end.  It was a page turner.  It was inspiring.  Reading it changed my life and enlivened me.

Why on earth would I need a break from inspiration and being enlivened, I began to wonder?  Why on earth would I need to consume anything but brilliantly prepared, well-seasoned magnificent and also nutritional literature this summer?

Now don't misunderstand me.  I DO understand that there are brilliant, well-written science fiction, fantasy and other genres out there, and I intend to keep reading them.  Nor do I seem to be done experimenting with pulp fiction.  The last book I read (and thoroughly enjoyed) was The Hearing by John Lescroart (and then I ran out and bought 3 more books by him--well written legal mystery/thrillers set in San Francisco). 

Similarly, I don't judge anyone else for eating burgers, fries and milkshakes.  Although I really don't touch beef, I do still experiment with wheat, dairy and sugar--always to ill effect.  "What I can eat could kill you and what you can eat would kill me," say some friends of mine.
The challenge is that the downsides of choosing junk over nutritional lit are much more subtle for me than those of choosing junk food.  I don't feel sick. I don't gain weight.  Mostly I miss out on new ideas, new thoughts, an expanded horizon, that feeling you get when you read a perfect sentence that you could never ever have written but that you recognize as sheer genius (I'm talking to you, Jonathan Franzen).

And so I leave you, as I leave myself, strongly considering consuming a stronger ratio of nutritious to junk literature this summer and beyond.  And that's a start...