On Reading More
These thoughts are prompted by Ian Leslie’s comments in his recent Ruffian Substack Nine Ways to Read: ideas for reading more and better books [paid post - it’s worth subscribing]. Also, I am getting ready for the holidays, and a summer of reading, and as The Fortnightly concludes the 2021-22 season. So books are even more on the mind than usual.
Ian Leslie cites a tweet by John Burn-Murdoch which asked his followers how many books they read annually. Out of 33K+ responders, almost 40% said 5 books or fewer, about 20% 21 or more. My own infinitely more modest tweet (340 votes) had different parameters and revealed that 43.5% read 20 books or fewer a year, while just over 20% read 50 or more a year (which includes me).
So, some scattered thoughts:
It is of course not a virtue in itself to read a lot of books. Thomas Newkirk in The Art of Slow Reading shows us eloquently how deep attentive reading is more important than quantity. But there are so many good ones out there…
Ian Leslie’s first point, his ur-principle, is bang on: nothing is more important than deliberately making time for reading. Years ago one of my teachers told me how important that was, and how he consciously carved out opportunities, and I’ve carried that advice with me in the decades since.
Leslie’s second piece of advice is pay the price. There is an opportunity cost in everything we do: if you want to succeed at something, first be clear about the cost of that success, and prepare yourself to pay it. For me, no day is complete or ‘right’ unless it has included some reading, and I will clear other things if I need to.
Thirdly, he recommends setting a target. I do: at least four books a calendar month, so averaging at least one a week. This is not within an ass’s roar of Andy Miller level, but it’s not bad (in the rare month I fall behind, I hurry up to make it by the last day).
Fourth: read in the gaps. Absolutely: the kind of deliriously deep reading we did in childhood is almost impossible to retrieve, and we have busy lives, but some books are suitable for the interstices of life: 20 minutes on the bus instead of doom-scrolling on the phone.
The Kindle has its place. I’d say 90% of my reading is of paper books, but the Kindle Paperwhite comes into its own particularly in two situations: i) travel (reduces luggage weight, instant delivery of new books, easy to hold standing up in a train in a group of jostling strangers, gently lit-screen in hotel rooms with poor reading light) and ii) at night (waking up early, not disturbing the OH by turning on a reading lamp). The light on a Paperwhite is nothing like the aggressive brightness of a phone or tablet and is as good as paper in sunlight.
Other technology: I’m not an audiobook person, though I do listen to a lot of podcasts. But I lose concentration: I’m too hardwired into staring at a page. I know they are saviours for others.
I do query Ian Leslie’s point 7: Read each book as quickly as you can. That works for some, but for others it feels downright wrong, and indeed overly anxious (see Burkeman below): at the end of last year I slowed down reading Claire Keegan’s Small Things Like These; I could have read it in 90 minutes, but I’d never again have the chance to read it for the first time. It needed savouring. I’ve recently started Maria Stepanova’s In Memory of Memory, and know already that this is one I’d like to take time over, taking in its winding Sebaldian reflections. But last week I fired through Jeffrey Boakye’s I Heard What You Said: a black teacher, a white system, a revolution in education in a couple of days (pictured, with large almond croissant, in the excellent Camerino café. More on cafés below).
That leads me on to Oliver Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks: time and how to use it, which gives us strategies to handle the incontestable fact that our time on earth is so limited. Apply the same principle to reading: It’s not so much that we’re too busy, or too distractible, but that we’re unwilling to accept the truth that reading is the sort of activity that largely operates to its own schedule. You can’t hurry it very much before the experience begins to lose its meaning; it refuses to consent, you might say, to our desire to exert control over how our time unfolds. In other words, and in common with far more aspects of reality than we’re comfortable acknowledging, reading something properly just takes the time it takes.
Obvious but true: put away digital distractions. I just leave my phone in another room. One of the best writers about this topic is Maryanne Wolf in her Reader, Come Home: the reading brain in a digital brain, about which I have written.
I always have more than one book on the go, but never read more than one novel. Like a child with a savoury and a sweet stomach, I like juggling non-fiction books, and keep the fiction on its own.
Connected with that: diversity makes me read more. I like moving around different kinds of books, new authors, For me, there’s no point in being a reader if you’re not interested in new angles, new authors, new subjects: in recent months, new to me, and just splendid discoveries, have been Abdulrazak Gurnah, Deborah Levy and Neil Sentance. Such exciting finds give you another jolt of enthusiasm to read still more.
I recommend recommendations: they fire you up. A good review is always stimulating (another recommendation: John Self), but there’s nothing like a personal prompt. You’ll read more books if you find reliable sources. There are no better conversations than the ones at Backlisted with John Mitchinson, Andy Miller and friends. Of course, you might also like The Fortnightly, which directs you to two or three books every edition. And here’s my page with books I’ve enthused about and found interesting.
Boy, do I love reading in cafés: I could read for hours there, an oblivious island in the middle of the clattery noise. Here’s a piece partly about reading in Cafe Central in Innsbruck.
Ian Leslie’s final advice is Line Them Up. No danger of me not doing that, as the Tsundoku pile grows. My ‘to read’ shelf is at head height as I enter the sitting room: comforting, exciting, full of promise every time I go into the room past it.
Do drop your own recommendations and foibles in the Comments. Happy Reading.