I used to be an avid reader. Most of my friends were. We would swap books, share recommendations, get excited together when a loved author released a new novel. Then life happened, I grew up and older and my reading habits dwindled. Or to put it more accurately, they died a death. I still read occasionally but I can safely say that, compared to my old habits, my current reading is on life support. So here I am, trying to revive it.
These days it seems that I buy more books than I read. Or at least I used to until I began to make an effort to save myself the money and space and simply leave them on the shelf at the bookshop. Just because I like the look of a book doesn’t mean I need to buy it. And in reality, whenever I feel like reading something I go and buy what I want to read at the time anyway! So there is no point in buying books for a hazy future. Especially if daily reading is no longer part of my routine.
The Japanese have a word for book buying without getting around to book reading: tsundoku. That’s how common it is. I don’t want to master tsundoku.
The pledge
I will (at least try to) read through the books I currently own. They weren’t all bought by me. Some are gifts. A few were found. Some are in my Kindle library because Declan got them for himself, and we share our library.
But… why?
We live in an attention economy that I have grown to greatly dislike. Nay, despise. I don’t want my eyeballs to be exploited for advertising revenue. I find that much of my old reading time has been absorbed into my mindless internet time. Result:
- I constantly feel like I don’t have time to read, which isn’t true. I just need to prioritise reading.
- My attention span has definitely suffered over years of scrolling. I think relearning to focus on a book for a decent stretch at a time will help me strengthen my attention muscle.
I miss being a big reader. Or a ‘constant reader’, as Stephen King often puts it.
Why a blog though? Why not just… read?
Because I also enjoy writing! More than that: I dislike the way the internet is going (see attention economy comment above). I miss the days of independent websites instead of everybody using the same handful of social media options. Don’t get me wrong, I like the community aspect of social media, but let’s not pretend that’s where we’re at now.
So I’m doing my bit and setting up a personal blog. Will anybody read it? Probably not. It might be crawled by AI on its path of destruction. I’m not hoping for an audience. But if it inspires even one person to rediscover the joy of reading and the art of not doom scrolling, it will have been worth it! And in any case, it gives me an outlet for creation instead of compulsive consumption.
The rules
- I will endeavour to read through my list of currently owned but unfinished books.
- The order of reading doesn’t matter.
- I will make a sincere attempt at reading each book. However, if I’m really not enjoying it, I reserve the right to simply stop reading it. Life is too short.
- For books that are part of a series, I am allowed and encouraged to purchase the next books of the series. Equally, I will read the previous books if I feel like I need to remind myself of what happened before the current unread book.
- I will still buy books that I don’t already own and really want to read right now. I know I will, so I’m not going to try to make a rigid rule against it. However, I will at least check the current list first to verify that there isn’t already a book in there that will scratch the itch.
The book list
You can find the list here. Some of these were started but never finished, often because some life event happened. I think for some of them I just wasn’t into it at the time. I hope to give them a fair chance this time.