Read a dang book
Published 4:00 am Tuesday, October 13, 2026
Have you heard of Alix Earle? She is some kind of influencer that does…things, I guess, like makeup and whatnot. I hadn’t heard of her until she showed up on “Dancing with the Stars” last year. So my answer to the question is “Not by choice.” She has recently made headlines, and it involves what I do for a living and what you are doing at this very moment.
According to a video with Interview Magazine (Don’t look at me, I’ve never heard of it), when asked “What was the last book you read,” Earle replies that she has “never read a book. Like maybe Dr. Seuss.” She says this “without embarrassment” according to The New York Post.
Now one could take the route of this being an omen of dangerous things to come for the young women under her sphere of influence, The New York Post certainly does. Or you could possibly take the route of this being a black eye on The University of Miami, which Wikipedia tells me she graduated from with a business degree, seemingly without reading anything that didn’t involve cats in hats. However, I want to go down a different thought, one that maybe doesn’t place all the onus on Ms. Earle.
I feel a lot of the problem of people not being book lovers comes from school. I feel like in school we are taught how to read but not to love reading. Now this has nothing to do with teachers at all. I know there are dedicated teachers who can get any kid excited about reading. One of my favorite teachers in high school was my English teacher (Hi, Mrs. Journagan). I think it comes down to the system in general. When you have to do something for school as a kid, it becomes work. That’s no fun. Even when you get to choose the book you read, it’s usually for an assignment, like Accelerated Reader points or for a book report. By the way, are AR points still a thing? I’m so old. My point being, you read a book because you HAD to, not because you wanted to.
I believe the point, like so many of my ideas, was better put by someone else. In this case, it’s book social media personality (I think that’s the term), Steven J. Reese. In his video, he addressed the Earle controversy by saying that the divide between readers and non-readers comes down not to intelligence but to being given that first book you love that will kick-start your love for reading. I’ll share an example.
In Fourth Grade, I got a handful of Great Illustrated Classics. This sparked a fire in me. I loved these books. I had to collect them all. Now, this was partly due to my obsession with collecting things, but I still loved to read them. Stories like “Peter Pan” and “The Three Musketeers” were some of my favorites. Even as I advanced in school, I had books I loved, from young adult fare like “Al Capone Does My Shirts” and “Flipped” to grown-up stories like “To Kill A Mockingbird.” I remember really getting into that one. It may have been due to being told we were gonna watch the movie at the end of reading it, and then we didn’t, Mrs. Journagan!
But I agree, I think people would be more readers if they just found the book they loved. I’m not saying I’m a big reader by any means. My attention span wanes, but I still love reading books. My last favorite one was the biography of Jim Henson; check that one out. And there’s nothing wrong with not being a book person, but you need to figure that out for yourself by reading.
So yeah, go read a dang book. It doesn’t have to be fancy books like Dickens or Shakespeare, it can be any book. If you love it and it sparks your imagination and love for the written word, that is a far better thing.
But, hey, you don’t have to take my word for it.
Zach Holt is a general assignment reporter for the Harrison Daily Times, who wanted to make a Wishbone reference but couldn’t find a way. Email him at zach.holt@harrisondaily.com
