Reading is Cool, but it's not THAT Cool
I’ve read books for the greater part of my life. The love of books is something my mom worked really hard at instilling in me. They’ve been part of my social identity since college for two reasons: 1) I had two to three mandatory readings every week 2) Because of that, I’ve brought books with me wherever I went. Carrying books around is a habit that still hasn't left me today, a decade after getting my master degree in Comparative Literature.
I haven’t read under 50 books a year for close to fifteen years now mostly because I like it. It’s something I have successfully incorporated in my day-to-day life. It gets me a lot of random validation from strangers, colleagues and people who are friendly, but not quite friends. People love that I read. They love to have a reader in their life even if it confronts them with their insecurities about their own reading habits and it weirds me out.
Same goes for strangers on bookish internet places like Goodreads, Reddit or Facebook groups. People have a high opinion of themselves for being readers, like they’re members of a secret intellectual elite that normies can’t wrap their minds around. What is up with that? Are we readers worthy of a certain social status? Does the mere act of reading books make you special?
The common sense answer to this question is no. Of course not. Because Judeo-Christian values who are still prevalent in our society make it morally wrong to ever think of yourself as special. But books themselves are wildly different from the other forms of media available today. They existed well before the industrial revolution and in all likeliness they’ll keep existing after it all comes crashing down.
….so, are we right to put readers on a pedestal? Are we the exception in a world that is swirling down a giant cosmic toilet?
The worship of the object
Books are the only non-digital form of media left, except perhaps newspapers. Both are slowly undertaking a digital revolution (newspaper in particular, out of financial necessity), but part of their charm resides in the fact you’re not forced to be on the internet in order to consume them. They are an escape from the endless pit of rudderless escapism that is the world wide web. So, their physical form is and will remain hard to kill.
There is a latent nobility to carrying a book around. It says something about your character that you’ve taken the deliberate decision to take a step back from the ever-vibrating digisphere in order to choose what to pay attention to. Because we live in an economy of attention and the fact that you’ve chosen to look up from your iPhone (where everybody wants you to look all the time) in order to pursue something that you want is not an easy task.
This idea of inherent choice gives readers an aura. It’s a rather recent phenomenon in history, which coincided with the apparition of other technological media: radio, television, film, etc. Because there are easier ways of entertaining yourself, getting informed or learning things. There isn’t a skill I can’t pick up on YouTube, so why would I read a fucking book about it? Right? Choosing to read is willingly choosing to do something more difficult and challenging than sitting in front of a screen or listening to people talking.
In the twentieth century, books as a physical object became a symbol of intellectual discipline. Is it warranted? I guess that the act of willingly establishing a relationship with a non-digital object over many days is an indicator of that, but reading books isn’t a requirement to intellectual discipline. You can have intellectual discipline and not read any books and you can read a book a week and be a complete fucking moron.
What reading actually is
What people are losing sight of when worshipping books is that they are, first and foremost, a form of entertainment. They can be intellectual entertainment that help you understand the world better and become a better person, but unless you’re reading them out of academic or professional obligation, you’re using them to furnish your personal downtime.
Choosing to spend time with a book is commendable. It is in many ways a form of intellectual exercise. It’s like taking your brain to the gym. But going to the gym doesn’t mean you’re going to lose weight or get in shape. Your mere presence there doesn’t guarantee improvement the same way that reading a book doesn’t guarantee to make you smarter. It’s entirely possible to spend years reading dumb shit.
I most certainly did.
In my most prolific year, I’ve read 153 books. Not all of them were good. Not all of them were even worth my time. There were novels. A handful of graphic novels (which is a noble way of calling a very long comic book). Self-help books. Philosophy. Physical books. eBooks. Audiobooks. I would read whatever I could put my hands on. I was looking for intellectual, philosophical and emotional stimuli. Not all of them delivered. Not even half.
My point is: I’m always looking for an intellectual or an emotional relationship with an author, but what I mostly get is entertainment and companionship in my downtime. A decent way of spending seven to twelve hours. It doesn’t make me smarter or better. I could easily invest that time in documentaries that would teach me something or watch so-called canonical movies I’ve never seen before, but I choose not to.
Because what I want is the intellectual relationship and while it’s not always nourishing, I really crave the one-on-one process of reading a book. There’s an intimacy to it. You’re experiencing art in your own personal way. There’s a freedom to it that other forms of media can’t ever possibly grant. That’s why I carve time in my day to do it. I’m a guy who lives in his own head a lot and it’s a great way to feed the daydreams and fantasies.
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What is my point exactly? That books are important for what they contain. Not for what they socially represent. They are not a magical object that kill fascist and make the world smarter. They can be dumb and noxious as much as they can be smart and enlightening. Don’t put readers on a pedestal because they’re readers. Put them on a pedestal for who they are or what they read.
I wholeheartedly believe that reading is an awesome way to stay sane in a world that becomes more and more digitally fragmented. Choosing what to pay attention to is healthy and empowering. But not everybody makes the right choice. Choosing to read a book doesn’t automatically make it the right choice. There are idiots everywhere and what makes you not an idiot is understanding that. We're not that cool, guys. We're merely intellectually alone.
Books are a medium and the medium is not the message. They’re dead trees with ink on it. Deal with it, nerds.
