Note: This was originally written as part of my essay on how to end your online era, but got removed in the edits. I thought it worked as a cool standalone essay, with a little TLC. People also ask me a lot of reading-related questions, so I tried to address some of them here.
“Because when I read, I don’t really read; I pop a beautiful sentence into my mouth and suck it like a fruit drop, or I sip it like a liqueur until the thought dissolves in me like alcohol, infusing brain and heart and coursing on through the veins to the root of each blood vessel.”
— Bohumil Hrabal
i.
I probably read for three or four hours a day. I read at a very slow, almost leisurely pace, often with a voice in my head like I’m reading to myself, underlining and making notes in the margins, rereading interesting or confusing parts two maybe three times, pausing to reflect, then staring off into space, then snapping back and starting to read again. I read in the morning before work, I read at lunch, at dinner, before going to bed, standing in line at the supermarket, waiting at the dentist’s office, and basically in any other cracks and quiet crevices of the day that I can find.
From sheer accumulation, I’ve read close to fifty books this year, including some big and difficult works like Dante’s Divine Comedy, Milton’s Paradise Lost, Steinbeck’s East of Eden, as well as longer studies on the writings of Stevenson and Chesterton and Hrabal and medieval literature and all the best essays of David Foster-Wallace1. Oh, and I’ve reread two-thirds of the Bible.
It is really extraordinary how much can get done in a year when you just show up day in and day out, sit down, and do something over and over again without worrying too much about progress or achievement or speed.
In some ways, I wish that number were lower. It’s evidence that I’m still reading too quickly and trying to cram too much into my head without enough time for digestion and digression. I don’t read to accumulate information exactly, but to let stories dawn on me, to let stories bathe my goals and dreams and fears, influence how I see the world and interface with reality. This is also why I mostly read fiction. Humans live in and live out stories.
The number of books one reads is a silly metric and doesn’t actually matter that much. A true education unfolds over a lifetime2.
The cumulative effect of this kind of deep reading is hard to overstate. My reading fertilizes and waters my writing, but it is also sown into all other areas of my life.
It is my belief that if you read seriously, especially in an age where real reading is uncommon, people start coming to you for guidance, people start asking you to work on interesting projects with them, people start bringing cool opportunities your way that you didn’t even know existed, wanting you to lead, to listen, to speak, to write books. People even start opening up about their guilt and mistakes and shame, sensing you can help bind up their broken heart. It’s like your brain is working on a wavelength that others want to be on.
Deep reading has a visceral quality to it. There is a kind of refinement that occurs, not only from the insight a good book can contain, but also the patient endurance that develops from sitting with something for a long time and giving it the space to unfold without running away when it gets hard.
In a world that wants everything distilled down to bullet points, the kinds of ideas that resist compression are increasingly forgotten and become increasingly valuable. What happens when we stop reading our children fairy tales? When everything gets squeezed, what slips between the cracks? What is lost in the lossyness3?
With a lifetime reading program, your sensitivity to story enhances. Your capacity to notice, to imagine. You quite literally begin to think and speak in a new language as the world takes on a new hue.
I’m sure that sounds cliche and annoying and mostly meaningless, like whenever we try to use words to describe something capital-T True, but I think the capacity to pay attention and consciously direct what you pay attention to is the single most valuable skill to develop in life. I know that’s a serious claim and I’m claiming it seriously. Attention is the beginning of devotion and what we love decides our life4.
In the early days of rekindling a love for reading that’s been smoldering since secondary school, I’d say to anchor on joy as much as possible. It shouldn’t feel like a chore or a weight or just another thing you have to do. It shouldn’t feel like a “should”!
There are books out there that will meet you where you are, that will tell you things about yourself you don’t already know, that will light up your insides. If you haven’t found them yet, keep looking.
In the past, I’ve gotten bogged down by trying to have a complex notetaking system or do intensive studies that generally made me like reading less.
There is no right way to read. People who share their complex reading systems fail or forget to mention that these systems started simple and emerged organically for them over time as they learned what worked and what didn’t, and cannot, by definition, be copied.
The most helpful thing (and I acknowledge this is boring and maybe disappointing) is to create enough quiet time in your days to ruminate and contemplate and reflect on what you read, letting it diffuse in your blood like liqueur, watching it play out in the theatre of your mind, noticing what other things in your brain it bumps into.
This is all to say: paper books are a rare window to escape a world of screens, to slip into a slower, stickier, more seductive mode of being. Text remains the loveliest medium.
ii.
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