On the pleasures of Reading

As I was driving this morning a call appeared on my Bluetooth. It was my old friend Nic Healy. Nic and I used to work at 2ser. I’m still there but Nic has moved around as a presenter for the national broadcaster. At 2ser, Nic and I would enjoy wide and varied chats about books, on air and off.

Nic was calling me to reprise our on-air book talk. He was doing evenings and being January he wanted to talk about people’s resolutions. In particular he was interested in the book goals and reading quotas people set for themselves. He was of the opinion they got in the way of reading for pleasure.

What did I think?

I was half an hour from home and would spend the rest of the drive turning this over. Certainly, I’ve tried out online reading targets. I’m generally horrible at inputting the data and would suddenly find myself catching up ten books at once in a way that surely looked artificial. Reading frequently and in large numbers is also a part of producing Final Draft. Of course, I could just go off the talking points I’m given, but I don’t think anyone would enjoy that.

So, what do these books quotas contribute to our reading? Is it all bad or could they give us a needed nudge? And more fundamentally, how does the compulsion to read fit in with our purpose for reading in the first place? I promised Nic I’d at least try to come up with a coherent answer…

Firstly, a note on data. As a metric, the number of books read doesn’t tell us much. We know nothing of pages, or content, style, or even enjoyment. But if we dig into just the idea of gross books read it still falls arbitrarily.

Numbers rarely have much to tell us on their own. If you read five books last year, is that a lot, or a dismal failure. Five books may be a achievement if you had a teacher who scared you from reading and these are the first five you’ve picked up in twenty years. They may be the most important books in your world if you shared them with dear friends. Perhaps they even saved a life because one gave you the insight to reach out to a friend at their time of need. Data is great, but single data points just fail to provide the necessary context. They don’t tell a story.

As soon as we start bringing in new data points though things get weirder. How many books you’ve read is just another pissing contest and I’m here to tell you it’s not the size of your TBR that counts. But what if our reading goals are a kind of positive storytelling. A manifesting of our inner book nerd?

Just like fitness gurus recommend turning a goal, into a habit, into a routine maybe reading goals will get us ready for our daily neural workout. I certainly make sure I pick up a book at least once in the day. I also know firsthand that you can train your reading. I don’t recommend it for all books, but it is possible to sprint through the pages, much in the same way a hefty tome might feel like a deadlift!

But if your friend’s goal was to run ten kilometres a day, would you still recommend a jog if they’d injured themselves the day before? This metaphor isn’t going to get us all the answers we want!

My feeling is that reading goals may also distract us from experiencing a wide range of texts. I mean what are we talking here; does a novella count the same as the full text of Lord of the Rings. If you’re in it for the numbers you’ll be swinging towards a certain type or length and not ranging widely. And what about essays, poems, journal articles or those long reads that actually estimate the time for you. I’m a firm advocate of reading widely and doing it for the numbers might steer you away from that. So how do we read widely and follow our interests?

At the moment the only goal we’ve discussed is how many. Reading offers so much more though than a number and a bragging right. If we want to dive deeper into what we’re reading, we need to start by thinking about why we are reading.

This need not be a heavy activity. No degree required. Think of a book that you loved, if you can’t land on a book any story will do. What grabbed you, absolutely hooking you in and not letting go? Follow that idea. Maybe it’s the escape you felt, leaving your everyday. Perhaps the book illuminated something in your world that had been bugging you. Sometimes the characters are close enough, but also just removed that they can give you insight into your own life.

Entertainment. Escape. Education. Empathy.

It’s just a coincidence that I landed on four E’s, but these are the things that drive our reading. Once we know why we are reading we can start to look for books that will fulfill that need. It also gives us criteria for whether a book is satisfying our need. And if you need to hear this, listen close.

You don’t have to finish books.

Once you know what you’re looking for, you’ll know when you’re not getting. It doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. Nor is there anything wrong with the book. Like roads, books are are of varying quality and almost certainly most of them aren’t heading where you are going. Look for the ones that are.

There’s so much more to the ways we read and what it brings to our life that I’m feeling a sequel to this chat. One quick note before we go on the need to read certain books.

Important books; the ones that get taught and reprinted and recommended, they got where they are for a reason. Have you thought about what that reason is through?

One shorthand for the so-called cannon of literature is ‘Stale Pale and Male!’ Many great work’s of literature were created by and reinforce a particular world view. Again this is a much longer discussion, but know that it’s ok to not hit it off with these books. Too often they have ideas that are sexist and racist, they diminish people for the benefit of the powerful and really don’t represent our world today. There are many great works amongst the cannon, but there are also a lot of great works being written today.

You’ve got time, find your story.