Shannon Reed was 2 when her grandmother taught her to read, and the habit stuck.
Growing up, in Altoona, Reed was such a bookworm that when her parents wanted to ground her, they did it by taking away her books, leaving the TV as her only friend.
“They knew how to get to me,” says Reed today, with a laugh. “I learned my lesson.”
Reed became a writer, with a specialty in humor and credits in the New Yorker’s “Shouts and Murmurs” column, Slate and the Washington Post. But her second book explores her default setting as a reader.
“Why We Read: On Bookworms, Libraries and Just One More Page Before Lights Out” (Hanover Square Press) is a collection of 40 humorous essays that draws on her reading experiences from childhood to the creative writing classes she teaches as an associate professor at the University of Pittsburgh.
One essay is Reed’s personal history of libraries she’s known, often as homes away from home. Others explore the pleasures of the literary series, the appeal of taking road trips as a way of understanding books you’ve read, and the appeal of sad books. But Reed also tackles hindrances to reading, everything from classroom assigned reading and the worksheets that went with it — which she instinctively loathed as a kid — to the “rules” about reading that propagate online.
Reed has watched her students contend with arbitrary rules like injunctions against dog-earing or marking up books they own, or demands that they finish every book they start, even if they’re reading for fun and don’t like it.
“You don't have to force yourself through books like that,” she said, whose own tastes run the gamut from “Jane Eyre” and “Gone Girl” to cookbooks.
Meanwhile, Reed also counsels readers (hers, and anybody’s) that it’s OK to not fully understand a book, or even misunderstand it. One essay describes assigning George Saunders’ Booker Prize-winning novel “Lincoln in the Bardo” to a writing class, only to be initially baffled herself by its experimental style. (It’s now a favorite of hers, and she still teaches it.) Another essay, “To Feel Less Alone,” discusses the importance of books that represent different types of people, especially for readers who belong to marginalized groups themselves.
Other essays are more purely comical. “For Love” is a laugh-out-loud account of the day when Reed and her preschool teaching partner tested the limits of their guile in trying to avoid yet another reading of a picture book, “Old McDonald Had a Farm,” the kids could not get enough of. “Signs You May Be A Female Character In a Work of Historical Fiction” satirically lists such attributes as “Your name is Sarah” and “Your best friend is a horse.”
Like Reed’s first book, the 2021 essay collection “Why Did I Get a B? And Other Mysteries We’re Discussing in the Faculty Lounge,” her second’s gotten positive reviews. Kirkus Reviews described “Why We Read” as “delightful.”
Reed said she hopes it gets more people to read or to read more. Based on feedback from readers — the book came out Feb. 6 — she thinks it’s having the desired effect.
Her “absolute favorite” comments, she said, are along the lines of: “Right after I finished your book, I went to the bibliography at the back, and bought or took out other books that you recommended. … I took out this book that I wasn't sure I would like, but you said it was good. So I'm going to give it a shot.’”
