I've spent a lot of time wondering why so many people don't read books.
The usual explanation is that people are too busy. Others argue that phones and social media have destroyed our attention spans. Both explanations probably contain some truth, but I suspect there is another possibility that we don't talk about very often.
What if many books simply aren't written for non-readers?
Whenever I walk into a bookshop, I'm reminded just how much variety there is. Some books are beautifully descriptive, lingering over places, landscapes and tiny details that many readers genuinely enjoy. There is absolutely nothing wrong with that style of writing. In fact, I understand why people love it. But over time I realised it wasn't the kind of book I wanted to write.
When I eventually sat down to write No, I Won't Buy You a Drink!, I made a conscious decision not to package the world around me. During my travels I certainly visited remarkable places, but the places themselves were rarely what stayed with me. Long after the buildings, monuments and landscapes had faded from memory, I still found myself thinking about the conversations I'd had, the misunderstandings that taught me something, the kindness of strangers and the countless ordinary moments that quietly changed the way I understood people.
There are already thousands of books that can describe famous landmarks more beautifully than I ever could. I wasn't trying to compete with them. I simply wanted readers to stay on the journey with me, moving naturally from one experience to the next without feeling that the scenery had become more important than the people standing in front of it.
As I was writing, another thought kept returning to me. We often assume that people who don't read are somehow different from people who do. We tell ourselves they're too busy, too distracted or simply not interested in books anymore. Yet many of those same people will happily spend hours watching documentaries, listening to podcasts, following long conversations online or losing themselves in a good story on television. That made me wonder whether the problem might not be stories at all.
Perhaps the problem is that many books are still written for people who already love reading.
I wanted to write something that someone who rarely picks up a book might still enjoy. That didn't mean simplifying the ideas. It meant communicating them as clearly as I could. I wasn't trying to impress readers with elaborate descriptions or literary flourishes. I was trying to make the writing feel like a conversation with someone sitting across the table, allowing the ideas to emerge naturally from the journey instead of asking readers to admire the writing before they experienced the story.
The irony is that books are usually reviewed by passionate readers, which is perfectly reasonable. They're naturally comparing one book with another, judging style, structure and literary technique. Sometimes, however, that also means a book is judged by what it deliberately chooses not to do. If an author strips away some of the traditional packaging, it can appear that something is missing, when in reality the simplicity is intentional.
Looking back, I don't think the question is whether people still enjoy stories. I think they do. The better question may be whether we've become so accustomed to writing for experienced readers that we've forgotten the millions of people standing just outside the bookshop.
Perhaps non-readers aren't broken. Perhaps they're not too busy. Perhaps they've simply been handed books written for somebody else.
If that's true, maybe the solution isn't teaching people to read differently.
Maybe it's occasionally writing differently.
Topics:
#MemoirWriting #WritingPhilosophy #AustralianAuthor #TravelMemoir #NonReaders #Books #Observation #Authenticity #DJGifford #NoIWontBuyYouADrink