Here’s an honest opinion, one that I totally respect: “Books aren’t for me.”
Lots of people don’t read, or they don’t read much.
If you’re like 23% of people who haven’t opened a book in the last twelve months, I see nothing wrong with saying that. It’s only honest. Personally, I’m not a moviegoer. I did Barbenheimer last weekend with a friend, and that satisfied the urge to visit the theater that I get about once a year.
Like I don’t bother with movies, you might not take time to read.
There’s another sneaky line of thinking, though. You’ve likely seen it, and I bet I’ll show that you’ve believed it, too.
It’s not only the reason we don’t read. It’s the reason we fail to do all sorts of things that we enjoy and that enrich us.
Tell me if it looks familiar.
Figure 1
As I was sketching the early thoughts which became this prediction about books, I was shown a Twitter thread in my feed.
At first, I was convinced it was satire. Unfortunately, I came to realize it was sincere.
The thread contained excerpts from this Substack post by writer Richard Hanania. The post argues that books are mostly fluff. Authors today expand their ideas into books for PR and career-related purposes, but most ideas would be better left as a tweet or short blog post that’s digested quickly.
If a book is fluff, you shouldn’t suffer to read it. No argument there.
We have here the set up for an amazing point: if you find the circles you’re in are elevating trash books, then maybe it’s time to look elsewhere. Maybe it’s time to expand your borders and read more widely.
Right?
Wrong. Hanania spends the second half of his post making a case against reading Great Books (old or ancient classics).
You can imagine why, as an English student, I was dumbfounded.
Hanania’s quest for knowledge accounts for the freshest information, but he passes over insight into the human experience1. The classics thrown out. Fiction unmentioned.
Figure 2
Andrew Tate, too, had an interesting tweet about books over the summer. “Reading books is for middle-brain losers,” he colorfully articulates.
It reminded me of this video, my first ever exposure to Tate a couple years ago. In it, he explains why “no man should ever cook.” It takes so long to chop an onion (the example he repeats), that you should have instead been on your grind, building a passive income sex-trafficking empire.
If you cook, you’ll be poor.
The video is about food, not books—but it’s principally the same. How many dollars could you be out earning instead of spending thirty minutes in a chair?
These views share common elements. One is value. Another is time.
The objective of every activity we participate in is to maximize and incrementally improve ourselves. That’s what life is, right?
One wants abbreviated books so he can input more. Another throws out books so he can output more.
The views also share an irony. Both of their propagators are published authors, telling us not to read.
There’s a manosphere angle we could focus on here. I’d rather not, though, because it’s just as easy for each of us to fall prey to these patterns of thinking. You don’t have to be a grindset influencer or online intellectual2 to quietly absorb the notion that each moment we’re awake should be adding to our worth in some quantifiable way.
Reading a novel, going to the pool, spending time with loved ones. These pastimes feel like cheating, so we dismiss them.
When we allow ourselves these guilty pleasures, we rationalize them in pragmatic terms: “This recharges me so I can go back and work even harder.” For some reason, we’re uncomfortable just saying, “I enjoy this thing, so I spend some of my free time doing it.”
Tate frames his cooking video as a specific, real-life incident. He’s at the house of a friend, who attempts to make food for the two of them. So when Tate scolds him for wasting time that should be spent earning, it’s important to recognize that money isn’t on the table. Time together is. The logic is inconsistent; he doesn’t spur the man to go in to work. He only invalidates their time together, breaking bread as old friends. Likewise, when we choose to believe that every moment must be optimized and monetized, we rarely act consistently with that belief. It’s not that guilt gets us up and moving. Ironically, we just scroll longer and rot more.
In Hanania’s case, I reject the premise that books exist only for the purposes he describes.
I’ll grant that when you read for academic purposes, you skim and scourge books for the important pieces. But there are plenty more reasons to read besides disseminating facts as efficiently as possible.
I’ll save you the clichés about CS Lewis and chronological snobbery. One of the things I appreciate about Lewis, though, is the weight that he gives to the human experience and the human soul. Today’s intellectualism comes in many flavors, but they all have a tendency to suggest that the key to success throwing out the parts of humanity that aren’t immediately useful. If it’s inefficient it’s bad, if it’s emotionally concerned it’s bad, if it’s particular it’s bad, if it’s ambiguous it’s bad.
Lewis doesn’t propose mind over matter, but he uses his mind to expand his frame of reference for what life (or “matter”) can mean. He worked academically, but he also wrote to the common person. He created fantasy worlds and crafted poems, too.
We feel the pressure to produce measurable value, asking, “That’s what life is, right?” The answer should be, “No, life is more.” But absent a better definition of what is valuable, we let the efficiency mentality creep back in. Ironically, if we could bring ourselves to read a novel or cook a meal with no guilt, we’d be amazed how enriched our lives became.
“I want to make things you can put on a shelf.”
That’s how I’ve often explained my peculiar move to return to school and study English. I had stumbled into a career of writing and communications, spinning up emails and social captions that were functional and efficient. Books stared at me from the shelf while I worked on my computer.
I realized that readers return to these classics decades and centuries later, finding new meaning in their stories over multiple readings.
On the other hand, you’d never read my social captions a second time. Their lifespan on the feed was eight practical seconds.
I don’t know what inspired my realization, but I’m grateful it happened. I’ve found that—to me—ideas are most valuable when they don’t promise immediate payouts.
I think everyone could realize the same. Clearly I’ve been on a kick lately, writing about books and reading.
But maybe it’s not for you.
Whatever the case, we should use our minds to expand the definition of what it means to live. We should reject the pressure towards more and embrace our most human activities.
They don’t have to pay off, but they will.
Honest.
The comments to Hanania’s Substack post feature many thoughtful responses which I didn’t quote for time.
In the days between writing and publishing this essay, HuffPost published an article on Hanania, exposing vile writings published under a former pseudonym.
I chose not to sidetrack this piece’s theme to focus on these revelations or Hanania solely, though the article has spurred much conversation online. To the extent I examine his and Tate’s statements, it’s to create application for you as reader.
I find his response as rigorous and satisfying as his argument against books. I’ll leave it to the reader to determine any further relevance to this topic.
You should pat yourself on the back because this post achieves, to some degree, the same effect as the books on your shelf. I came back and read this three times over the course of the past 4 days, and it got better every time.
This is absolutely my favorite post from you ever.