by Hugh Gilmore

Back in the fall of 2006 I approached Local editor Pete Mazzaccaro, whom I knew slightly, with a writing idea. I proposed: to try to read 100 books in 2007 and describe my progress along the way.

I had tried to read that number of books several times in my adult life, but never succeeded. Too many other things got in the way. This year, I told Pete, I want to describe those obstacles and how they baffled my good intentions. In short, I told him I wanted to take up my sword and go to battle against “The Enemies of Reading!” And that’s how my column got its name.

The idea was good for a year’s worth of occasional columns, perhaps. Somehow – one cannot plan these things – it went on longer. This column is my 355th, written over nearly a decade. Ten years ago, the enemies of reading were simpler and fewer. I wrote many diatribes against TV, citing its well-known status as “chewing gum for the mind.” The other enemies were VHS movie tapes and, a bit later, DVDs.

It seemed stupid and unrealistic to rail against people playing tennis, volleyball, softball, walking, running, and so on, instead of reading, so I never did. My target was always the giving over of one’s mind to forms of leisure “entertainment” that are clichéd, dumb, enervating, dishonest, misleading, and ultimately dangerous to the American citizenry since they turn people’s brain folds into pudding.

Thus, these forms of entertainment have created a nation that, as of 11:03 a.m. on Jan. 1, 2016, held 322, 915, 999 people who can’t come up with better candidates for its presidential leadership than the sad sacks whose lies we’ll be subjected to for the next year. (Population size number taken from the “U.S. and World Population Clock.” If you want to have some fun while testing your ability to endure mankind, go that website and watch the numbers grow. A few minutes of that will make you want to start hoarding your Froot Loops.)

Today, going on 10 years after I started this column, the enemies of reading have proliferated. The old bogeymen, broadcast TV and cable TV are dying, being replaced by streaming video, with Virtual Reality capacity. FaceBook has emerged as the ultimate, enjoyable, time-waster. Instagram, Reddit, YouTube, “smart” TVs, Netflix, Hulu, Roku and many other providers of images, messages, films and documentaries are at everyone’s beck and call with a very minimal fuss or bother. My new TV, for example requires only three quick clicks to set my movie choice rolling: click, the set is on; click, I’ve chosen the Netflix icon; click, I’ve started the movie they’re suggesting tonight. After that, the movie washes over me.

The other choices I mentioned provide the same quick grab of the lame mind. FaceBook and YouTube are my particular nemeses. If I try to jump in and grab what I want and get out right away I’m still liable to be stuck there for quite a while – despite my good intentions to elevate my mind and improve my grasp of this world I shall pass through but once.

Compared to all this instant gratification of our 700-level (football stadium yahoos) instincts, what a book has to offer seems quite uncompetitive. Books are objects. We hold them in our hands. They make no sounds, other than a slight whisper when we turn a page. The room we read in must be quiet. It doesn’t wash over you like a shallow surf you’ve lain in. You must pick it up. You must operate it. It allows no passivity, like the so-called media do. You must meet the author halfway and then walk beside him or her as they tell a story.

I think of books as people. One can learn from other people, right? Learn a way of thinking, or cooking, or tying knots? Learn what the battlefield smelled like during the Crimean War. Be elevated by an author’s philosophical musings. Be entertained by a writer’s stories. Fascinated by characters they show you, real or imagined. All these things and more.

If the person who thought and learned and experienced these things can’t be with you in the flesh, your next-best access to him or her is through the words they wrote down for you.

You may wonder if I succeeded in reading 100 books in 2007, the first year of this column. I did, in fact, and finished with a flourish: #100 was “Moby Dick” at 11:50 on New Year’s Eve. Coming up to the present, I’ve felt lately that I’d been letting the bad guys win the battle for my attention (and, truly, that means my mind, heart, and soul). So, I decided to read 100 books again this year. As of Jan. 31, I’ve finished 11. More reports from the front lines as we go along this year.

Hugh Gilmore is the author of a charming collection of stories based on his experiences running an old and rare bookshop on Chestnut Hill Avenue in Chestnut Hill. The collection is titled “Scenes from a Bookshop.”