Throughout 2017 and
continuing through 2018 I have attempted to drastically increase the quantity
of reading that I do. For both years I have kept in mind a general goal of
completing 52 books in one year - one book per week. This is a common challenge
as any Internet search will quickly reveal. The reasons for wanting to
undertake such a challenge are numerous: as a means to expand one's vocabulary,
improve one's writing through familiarization of different styles and
techniques, to increase one's knowledge and understanding, and as a way of
improving organization and scheduling skills. That last one is important;
despite the vast amount of time that is doubtless consumed in reading this
much, the argument is generally made that it can be safely taken away from all
the time that we generally waste in a day: the idle Internet browsing, the
Netflix binge-watching, playing games or fiddling with apps. While I believe
I've benefited from significantly expanding my reading, I have mixed feelings
about the project.
To start, in 2017
much of my reading was targeted toward a specific project of assisting me in
completing a work of fiction that I was writing. To this end I selected
numerous non-fiction science books often of incredibly narrow scope to help me
with technical details and some fiction that covered the same topics that I was
covering in my text. These were interspersed with more general interest reading
(fiction and non-fiction) that I had wanted to read for some time. When most
people speak of reading 52 books in a year, I doubt they envision including
very many highly technical and dense tomes among them. Four such volumes is enough to make the entire project
difficult to pull off, as the reading of them drags on and on, consuming just
about every free minute one has with hardly any end in sight. The result should
not be to cull such books, since they can be highly useful despite (or because
of) their great difficulty, but to keep in mind that the magical number 52 is
merely a guideline. However, in my research I found that often I got a lot more
out of the more general or well-regarded books than the highly specific ones. A
very specific book is perhaps best not read,
but consulted more as one would a search engine, looked up for references and
little tidbits of information. Reading
through some such books, in order to add them to the list of things I had read, was in hindsight a waste of time. It was
also my discovery that my tolerance for non-fiction was higher than for
fiction, so that reading lots of fiction tended to wear me out at a faster rate
than lots of non-fiction. However, intermingling my readings of fiction and
non-fiction proved beneficial. It's not just a change of pace, but a
readjustment in ways of seeing, in learning and applying.
Coming to the end of
2017 I found my reading strategy to be fundamentally broken. While I was
reading consistently, I was not consistently taking notes. I would recall
things, but perhaps not assign them to the correct book or author, or remember
a general statement but misremember some detail that was part of it. When I
wanted to reference these books as in an essay, I found I had to go back
through them, re-reading them and making new notes. Oftentimes I had notes, but
they were detached from page numbers and sections which made locating them
difficult, or I would simply skip out on any kind of summary detail, focusing
instead on whatever incidental detail caught my interest, but then later I
would have forgotten the gist of the
thing and have to re-read it. To remedy this I began making much more detailed
and substantive notes for my readings and I found this of immense help.
Typically I would make notes in a notepad that I carried with me along with the
book I was reading. After completing the book I would type up the notes, which
served to recall the book to my memory, thus placing it more securely in my
shaky mental machinery, and brought forward new thoughts and reflections
related to the book. Such note-taking took its toll however, and keeping pace
with regular reading and extensive note-taking became quite difficult - in some
cases I estimate that the time it took me to complete a book effectively doubled compared to my not having taken any
notes.
I put this
aggressive note-taking into practice in 2018 and have continued it throughout
the year. However, I also expanded my note-taking to encompass more of what I
was 'reading'. Articles that I read online I would now take notes of, as well
as videos that I watched: lectures, discussions, documentaries - all would now
get notes. This has significantly expanded the utility that I can get from
these varied resources and allows me to more easily distinguish and
differentiate different voices and points of view rather than having them all
form into some indistinct amalgam of gray
that cannot be located. It's quite refreshing to have a thought in one's head
and be able to know where it came from, to be able to quickly look it up and
find it in its original form and to place it in context.
But in 2018 I have
been running much further behind schedule than I ever did for 2017. In 2017 I
just barely passed the '52 barrier' by completing 54 books. So far for 2018 I
have only read some 35 books and am on track to complete 40, and even that may be
optimistic. I have been a lot less consistent this year, alternating between
periods of heavy reading and those of comparative drought. This has been driven
in part by workload: in my course studies and on my own I undertook a number of
projects which involved lots of things I hadn't done before and as a result
ended up consuming my days for chunks at a time. While the need to research and
write academic essays certainly spurred me to complete more reading, organizing
my work for assessment deadlines, working until the early hours of the morning
on projects and then stressing about those projects afterward left little time
for reading. At times I would technically have the time to spare for some
reading - 30 minutes here or there - but would be too preoccupied with a
problem I was trying to overcome to afford myself the quietude to engage in
some reading and note-taking. I had made my reading into work, and with my other work colonising more
and more of my time, I lacked the energy to then switch modes and engage in yet
more work albeit of a different type.
There was another
reason for my low reading in 2018 - travel. I spent two weeks in Barcelona in
the spring and a month travelling around Europe (Italy mostly) in the summer,
and did no reading during that time, as I found myself fully booked in trying
to explore and experience the places and squeezing in the odd location sketch
where I could. Further my Kindle was stolen while I was in Barcelona, robbing
me of a light reading travel companion.
My neglect would
lead to feelings of guilt, and I would then engage in periods of deep reading
to try to keep on track. However, while much of my reading has been undoubtedly
beneficial, taking such a taskmaster's approach has led to growing intolerance toward
reading that feels inessential. I've become more selective about my reading,
less likely to engage into the deep specificity that characterised my research
in early 2017 and much more likely to seek out the most essential text or texts
and to simply pencil down the peripheral readings as potential follow-ups in
the future.
All this brings me
to the number - why 52? Once one has expanded the definition of texts and the
notion of reading to encompass all media, then setting aside 52 books for
reading seems increasingly arbitrary. Of course it always was arbitrary, but
there's this implicit assumption that reading is good
for you, while other media consumption is not. This in spite of the fact
of the abundance of trashy junk-food books which are perhaps best described as
collected listicles. Books are beneficial because they are read - because a certain amount of critical
thinking must be applied in their decipherment, and this should improve
cognition to some extent. But in applying a systematic process to reading, and
then in learning to read a variety of
media - that is engaging with the media critically - the book loses some of its
privileged status. Reading shouldn't be
limited to books, so that hitting a specific number of books read per year is
much less a determinant of the amount of reading done. And if those books are
read simply, as opposed to critically, then the project is worse than say a
concerted critical examination of music videos.
I've also wondered
what kinds of books people read in these 52 book challenges. Of course you've
got the whole spectrum, but for sure there seem to be a lot of people who mix
in quite a lot of light fluff reading: self-help books, numbered steps to success,
books on fitness and well-being, that can do little to nourish the mind. With
such a vast sea of literature out there, and so many marked out as classics, it
astonishes me that people are able to make the time for such reading. Of
course, the value of such reading is different for each person and I suppose
for some it could form part of a very valuable research project. And perhaps I
am simply an ignorant outlier, and it is just me who has yet to read so much of
the Western canon that it is shameful and so everyone else can spare time for
such things. I also don't mean to denigrate contemporary writing by such
statements - often the most valuable thing we can read is something written
about and in our present condition rather than some old "classic"
with waning relevance to our modern experience, even if it does not go on to
stand the test of time itself.
So to sum up, here
are my thoughts on a project of reading. It's important to be discriminatory
about what you read - reading by itself is fine for a start but eventually this
reading should start to bring noticeable contributions to your understanding. It's
beneficial to keep a regular schedule of reading but not helpful to stress
about the number of books. Crucially, ensure that the reading is of lasting
benefit by making it part of a research program, such as by taking detailed and
systematic notes for future reference. And reading
in this manner can be applied to all media and should not be limited to books.
I should also note
that I have found it quite helpful to keep my reading loosely focused rather
than laser-focused, with room for expansion into more general topics and for an
evolving set of interests. The biggest conceptual leaps are often the result of
connecting several disparate and seemingly unrelated topics, which should serve
as somewhat of a warning against over-specialization. It's often tempting to
think that the answer lies in some other extra detail, that if we just turn
over one more rock there it will be, but more likely the entire frame that we
have been operating in is too limiting for what we want to uncover, and we need
to zoom out rather than zoom in. The Internet can be a terrible resource in
this regard, as recommendation algorithms are prone to leading us down rabbit
holes of ever-diminishing returns, while a walk through a library can prove to
be much more rewarding.
