Photos by L.G. Patterson
Are you an avid reader, also known as a bookworm? Compared with other cities, Columbia is crawling with bookworms. That’s because avid readers tend to be highly educated and older — a description that fits an awful lot of us, especially retired people who have more time and energy to spend with their noses in books and tablets or with audiobooks streaming through their earbuds as they walk the MKT trail or exercise at a gym.
Bookworms get a bad rap. The popular image of a bookworm is someone who hides behind a book, avoiding social situations and snobbishly dropping the name of an author — preferably from another century or country — in casual conversation. That’s not true for the Columbia avid readers who proudly consider themselves bookworms. And when researchers study the personality traits of heavy readers, that’s not what they find either. Although avid readers aren’t typically as outgoing as full-blown extroverts, research paints a picture of them as open-minded and likely to use books as a way to connect with others. Plus, reading gives them more interesting things to talk about.
Elaine Jurkowski, a social work professor and gerontologist at Southern Illinois University, is a lifelong reader who recognizes the social benefits that older readers gain from books. “As people age, they tend to become more isolated, especially if they have mobility limitations,” she says. “Regardless, reading keeps you connected with what’s going on in the world and with other people.”
A quick dip into the world of surveys and statistics reveals some surprising context around adults’ reading habits. Incredibly enough, according to statista.com, the average time a U.S. adult spends reading is a mere 16 minutes a day. That’s not much more time than it takes to boil a couple eggs or finish a cup of coffee in the morning.
Other surveys find that anywhere from 23% to 48% of adults haven’t read one single book in the past year. Brushing aside those people who won’t open a book if it falls onto their laps, the Pew Research Center says that everyone else seems to read between four to 12 books per year.
What exactly is the definition of an avid reader? A Goodreads survey indicated their average respondents read 12 books a year. A German study of the personality traits of avid readers limited their research to people who reported reading 18 or more books a year or having at least 120 books in their home. But weighing how many pounds of print a person reads may not be the best way to define an avid reader. If reading is an important part of your life … if you can’t imagine living without books, then that’s all it takes to consider yourself a member of the avid reader club.
Peggy O’Connor — An Unbound Love of Reading
Like a lot of avid readers, Peggy O’Connor, who previously served on the board of the Unbound Book Festival, keeps track of her reading life on Goodreads. Last year, she read or listened to 87 books, but she hasn’t always been hooked on reading. As a young woman in her 20s, she found herself in a painful marriage and turned to books for inspiration and escape. “I got courage from reading about protagonists who were able to get out of bad situations,” she says.
Braced with her newfound courage, she left her marriage, moved across the country and finished an undergraduate degree before she remarried and resumed her career in business, and became a high school English and special ed teacher. “I thought teaching might provide me the opportunity to do more reading, which was, of course, silly. I didn’t have any time to read. But since I’ve retired, I have been making up for a lost time,” she says.
O’Connor has captured her enjoyment of reading in an essay she developed for her writing group. Avid readers can’t help but to identify with her description of her reading life, which begins, “I read. When I’m joyful, or lonely or enthusiastic about life or a particular subject, I read. When I travel or stay at home by myself, I read. Even sitting on a doctor’s exam table in a drafty paper gown, when others are scrolling through their Instagram feeds, I steal a few pages to pass the time … Thank God I can read.”
As you might expect from a retired English teacher, O’Connor appreciates words and the way talented authors use them. “A good story is fine, but if it’s not beautifully written or if the author doesn’t write in an interesting style, I’ll put a book down,” she says. “I love to read beautiful, interesting language.”
For O’Connor, the advent of audiobooks has enriched her life. She listens to books while in the car or while doing household chores. And she says one of the best things about listening with earplugs is that she doesn’t disturb her husband and his noise doesn’t disturb her.
Mike Trial — Surrounded by Books and Trees
Mike Trial became enchanted with books at an early age. Currently, Trial lives on his walnut tree farm on the outskirts of Columbia, a place he retired to 20 years ago after a career in civil engineering. “I cannot remember an age in which I didn’t know how to read,” he says. “I learned to read long before I started school. And when my sister and I were young kids, our father would read something to us after dinner many evenings.”
Books are as much a part of Trial’s life as they are a part of his home. He owns about 2,000 books, but has to think a bit when asked how many books he reads a year. He says, “maybe 30 or 40?” But he’s leafed through the pages of more than 100, able to put a book down if it’s something he considers not worth his time.
His range of interests include some contemporary fiction and biographies, “but over the last probably five or 10 years I find myself going back to books I read long ago,” he says. “I’m one of those people who will reread something that they really enjoyed. For me, that’s the 19th century classics: Dickens, George Elliot, Jane Austen.”
Trial particularly enjoys reading biographies of authors he finds intriguing. Like almost all avid readers, he relishes talking with others about the books he values. Occasionally, he teaches courses on his favorite authors at Osher Mizzou Lifelong Learning Institute. “I’m very attracted to discussing books that I have taken a great deal of pleasure from with people I know and respect,” hesays. “Talking about books with others istremendous fun.”
Like O’Connor, Trial is fascinated by the way different authors use language.“ I will go back to familiar books and just luxuriate in the language and images. I don’t need to read anything for plot or to find out who done it — it’s just about the language,” he says.
Trial doesn’t hesitate when asked what impact reading has had on his life. Although he grew up overseas and has lived and worked on engineering projects throughout the world, he attributes reading as a way to make his life richer and more interesting. “If I had never picked up a desire or liking for reading, I would really be a dull person,” he says.
Janet Russell — Spending Time in the Past as Well as the Present
Janet Russell is an avid reader who is hooked on historical novels. Russell, who retired after teaching history and French for 30 years in Columbia Public Schools, now works part-time as an administrator at La Petite Ecole. She estimates that she reads between 30 to 40 books each year. “I read every evening without exception, even when I’m traveling,” she says. “No matter what time, no matter what we’ve done that day, I have to read to go to sleep. I think I need to put myself in somebody else’s world each day.”
Rusell finds that it takes more than an interesting time and place in history for her to stay with a book. “If I can attach to the main character, then the book has nabbed me,” she says. Although historical fiction offers Russell a relaxing escape from of the world, she considers reading as a way to enrich the other hours of the day.
“I don’t think you can read without learning to appreciate or at least explore diverse perspectives and ideas,” she says. “Even fluffy stuff can give you some perspectives.” Reading, though a solitary activity, by no means isolates Russell. She and her husband belong to three dinner clubs. They like to travel, and Russell takes part in her weekly yoga group, as well as spending time walking, either with or without the family’s dog.
Russell’s journey as an avid reader has allowed her to mentally travel to countries she has never seen, to imagine life in bygone eras and to listen in on the thoughts of characters who exist only in the pages of a historical novel. She took her first steps into the many cultures and places she has learned about while a child. “Our family was not wealthy, andI can remember my dad saving money so that he could buy an Encyclopedia Britannica that he would read out loud to us.”
Karen Touzeau — Juggling Reading with an Active Lifestyle
Karen Touzeau is an acrobat of a reader. She likes reading three different books at a time, and frequently while reading a hard copy of a book, she listens to the audio version simultaneously. “I’m always reading a piece of fiction, a piece of nonfiction and a cookbook,” she says. “A friend of mine describes me as someone who likes to read things that are powerful and troubling.”
Touzeau, who retired 10 years ago from her career as an administrator at Mizzou, realized the pleasures and benefits of books as a child. “I grew up in inner-city Detroit, and I found the public library was a sanctuary for me. I could ride my bike to the library, where reading helped me overcome my fears about going out into the world and being in spaces, particularly spaces where I would be the only person of color, which happens pretty frequently,” she says.
No one would confuse Touzeau for an introvert. “I have a very extraverted personality, but I also have a very private world that I live in when I am in my book. I want my books to take me to some place that I haven’t been before,” she says. In addition to reading, Touzeau loves cooking and anything related to the arts. “I’m the not someone who will suggest going for a hike; I’m going to be the one that flies to New York to see a Broadway play or who goes to see an author speak in Chicago.”
As for her tastes in fiction, Touzeau prefers literary fiction, such as books by Barbara Kingsolver and Claire Keegan. She stays away from romance and mysteries. Her penchant for listening to an audio version of a book while reading adds another dimension to her experience, helping her remember plot lines and differentiate characters. “It’s like you have the best of both worlds,” she says. “You have the beauty of the language before you visually and the voice of the author or professional reader pulling you through the book.”
Elaine Jurkowski — Taking a Dose of Her Own Medicine
Professor Elaine Jurkowski recognizes the benefits of Touzeau’s reading and listening method. “People learn in different ways and they retain information in different ways,” she says. “But if you hear something and you’re actually physically connected with it in some way, like taking notes or reading it at same time, that boosts your ability to retain the information.”
As people age, anything that helpsmemory stay strong and active is abenefit — which is exactly what readingcan do. “It’s not only good for you, but it builds your mental abilities on which reading depends,” she says. “One of those things is your episodic memory, which allows you to remember what happened in the previous chapters of your book. Reading can help preserve that.”
As a professor, Jurkowski has survived the time-consuming pressures of publishing or perishing and has spent a lifetime reading academic studies and writing textbooks about aging, sociology and social work. Now that she is tenured, the push to publish has diminished and she has more time to read.
“My real love is biographies,” she says. But she also enjoys books about politics. Recently, she began “Les Misérables” by Victor Hugo. Cognizant of the importance of challenging herself and staying connected with others, she joined a book group where most of the other members had English education backgrounds. She found the group challenging, but was disappointed when a scheduling conflict meant she had to stop attending. But her husband, who still belongs to the group, helps her stay connected by telling her what the group members are talking about.
A Future Filled with Books
One of the best things about books is that there’s always another one just a short visit away, whether from a bookstore, the library or your mailbox. Bookworms have every reason to look forward to a future filled with stories, histories, insights and just plain interesting things to learn about the world.
Trial explains the conflict every avid reader lives with: “You know there are thousands of books you would love to have the time to read and never will — but on the other hand, it’s a great problem to have. There are more books around than ever before in history, so it’s kind of a golden age for us readers.”
