The calendar never ceases to startle. How did fourteen years pass in the space of what seems like four?
And yet it was, indeed, fourteen years ago that my first book was published, The Little Guide to Your Well-Read Life. It was published as a lovely hardcover Levenger Press print edition (thank you, Danielle) and as an audiobook. Now, the brand-new America the Bilingual Press has reprised it as an e-book.
Just as print books did not disappear in the past fourteen years (as some had predicted), e-books and audiobooks have both become more mainstream. In what seems to me like The Golden Age of Books, many of us now partake of them in all three forms. I’m happy that the original Little Guide has now, finally, joined the e-book format.
And I’m pleased to announce that a new Little Guide—in e-book, print and audio formats—is coming soon.
Two disparate topics…or are they?
I’m currently finishing up The Little Guide to Your Bilingual Life, which America the Bilingual Press will publish later this year.
Proceeds from the books that America the Bilingual Press publishes will go to the Levenger Foundation, the family foundation that my dear father started. It has long supported literacy, and now will also support biliteracy.
This new Little Guide has been 12 years in the making, begun soon after I embarked on my own journey of learning Spanish. The responses I heard from my fellow Americans when they learned I had begun studying a language are what prompted me to begin reading about bilingualism, and interviewing what now totals hundreds of people about their own language biographies. The result was that I retired from Levenger and started a new initiative dedicated to reporting on bilingualism in America.
For longtime readers of this blog, you might well wonder how I went from running Levenger to starting a bilingual initiative. I didn’t see the connection at first myself.
But then I realized that the two occupy different points on the same continuum. Both a well-read life and a bilingual life result in our leading larger lives—more connected to others, filled with greater empathy, and more connected to ourselves.
Yearning by sort of a different name
My editor calls it my entreprenyearnial spirit (you know how editors love their words). But if so, it’s not just mine.
It’s what I’ve always sensed about Levenger customers, from those early days of selling “serious lighting for serious readers.” It’s not just about the reading lamp, it’s about the enlightenment that comes from reading.
Whether it’s reading another book or speaking another language, it must (to borrow Marie Kondo’s sweet mantra) spark joy. Just as we have choices in the way we read, we can—and should—choose to learn a language according to our time, tempo and temperament. And just as we are meant to lead well-read lives, we are meant to be bilingual.
For some of us, it may work out to having just a brush with bilingualism. For others (like me), they will adopt a second language to love for the rest of their lives. It’s however each of us chooses to live our own well-read life.
What has that been for you?
I’d love to hear how your own well-read life has evolved over the past fourteen years, and if you’ve had your own brush with bilingualism. You’re welcome to comment on this post, or you can email me at steve@americathebilingual.com.
Comments