Sembreak is good for two things: thinking about things, and catching up on reading.

That being said, I’m thinking: why is it that most people aren’t into reading?

The thought entered my head one Sunday night as I was alternating between re-reading “One Hundred Years of Solitude’’ (they say you only begin to appreciate its’ meaning the second time around), and chatting with a former classmate online. Somehow, we started talking about books and how not so many of our friends read. Before that conversation, I did not know that she was the type who read extensively. Readers, apparently, come in the most surprising packages.

I know this to be true from experience.

Some of the widest readers I know are the farthest things from the bookworm stereotype we’ve all become familiar with. They are a diverse set of people, ranging from models to musicians
to Math majors. Even the people you see on a daily basis — your best friend, break mates, and classmates — might actually be avid readers and you just don’t know it.

Of course, the reality is that most people aren’t. Most people are either music junkies or TV series aficionados, but never book buffs. Even the most popular pieces of literature like Harry Potter and Twilight (though I would hesitate to call it ‘a piece of literature’) are often watched before they are read, if they are read at all. I guess people of my generation simply don’t have the patience to pick up a good story, lie down on the sofa, and start reading.

It must have been easier before television and computers happened. But that was an era I never lived through. All I know is that with things like Glee, Gossip Girl, and Plants vs Zombies, what incentive
would anyone have to read? It is so much easier to have scenes pictured out for you than having to imagine them while reading a dull page full of words. Books just offer no competition when compared to the more visually-oriented media we have today. Comic books provide a little, but film companies turn them into movies anyway.

Reading is hard work compared to watching TV or playing computer games. That is the problem. But I think people lose out on a lot by not dealing with it. There is a value to written literature that cannot be found in visual or digital media. And that is the way it trains you to imagine, to analyze, and to think. TV spoonfeeds everything; books don’t. In watching TV, meaning can be plainly seen. In reading, meaning can only be discovered.

This is why I find it sort of sad that many of my peers have gone through “Florante at Laura’’ in high school only to say, “Yeah, that book was useless.” That people have read “A Rose for Emily’’ and not understand that the point of view was what made the story truly brilliant. That my friend read ‘’One Hundred Years of Solitude’’ once for Lit class and told me that the book was just a pointlessly long narrative. That there are countless other writers (many of them contemporary) with countless amazing stories that will never be read by a large audience, and yet people persist in watching The Hills or that horrible remake of 90210.

But that’s not to say that literature can’t do its part in bridging the gap. The same friend told me about her blockmate who didn’t appreciate Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream in high school, but was made to read a more modern version, with more friendly vocabulary, by his Lit professor.

He ended up loving it. Tapping into things that appeal to our generation might be helpful in encouraging us to read — this was how the idea for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies was born, and it has become massively popular abroad.

Maybe another way of doing it is to convert books into a digital format. I mean when you think about it, young people read all the time in the form of blogs, Facebook notes, and Twitter statuses. I would also think that most of us would be into reading if this were the case, but somehow ‘reading’ is still a different experience from using the Internet.

Finally, I think more parents should start their kids early in the habit of reading.

I am appalled that very few parents encourage their kids to read. It gets harder to get kids started on reading if they are only encouraged much later.

I guess people tend to think they miss out when they are reading. That it’s so much hard work for so little gratification.

Yet the truth is that people miss out on more when they’re not reading — not only on the stories, but the skills and the knowledge that come with the experience.

But really, come on. It’s sembreak! Why don’t we read?

(The author is a sophomore at the Ateneo de Manila University. Visit http://james.soriano-ph.com, or mail me at james@soriano-ph.com)