Do Not Try to Read 52 Books Next Year
By: Kayus Fernander
Tags: Books, Personal Development, Reading, Life, Lessons

I’ve given up trying to cram as much information in.

Photo by Gaelle Marcel on Unsplash

It’s that time of year for lists. Dammit. Here we go.

Spotify already started with a list of the songs I consumed during this year of terror and lockdown. Pretty soon, there will be lists of what people did to keep themselves sane in 2020, which hobbies they picked up, the most popular side-hustles, the TikTok challenges that captivated the internet.

And there will be lists of books. By Bill Gates or Barack Obama. Oprah, for sure. Then everyone else will chime in with the 52 books they managed to get through this year, the literary equivalent of a pissing contest. We’ll hear about the best business books, the best reads for spirituality, for making sense of the world, the political books, the must-reads by superstar authors. We’ll be reminded how great a feat it is to read so many and so varied a collection of books. It’s what well-informed, thought leaders do.

Don’t take the above as a criticism, although there is a twinge of anxiety. I love reading. Anyone who knows me, knows that I’ve spent my life lost in the pages of books. I derive so much joy, so much insight, so much self-awareness and perspective from reading and doing so regularly.

I’m also a slow reader. Sometimes I find that I’ve re-read a sentence 4 times and I still don’t get it. So, I take my time because I want to understand, I want to relish in the ideas and have them resonate. I find myself welling up over a passage that hits me like a ton of bricks, forcing me to scramble for a highlighter pen or Post-It note so I can re-live its brilliance at some point in the future.

The idea of getting through many books over the course of a year is something I’ve struggled with. Are there tons of books I want to read? Absolutely. My home is littered with books I’ve bought or borrowed that I, at one point or another, was dying to read. My husband has now persuaded me to put them in various places where they’re not in plain view and driving him crazy. But because I’m a slow reader, I rarely get to them right after I’ve acquired them. It can take months, years even, before I crack open the front cover.

There’s something about racing through book after book that feels like I’m short-circuiting that important process, that experience of letting their lessons wash over me and alter my thinking.

So, I feel this slight sense of failure that I’m not able to whizz through a book a week. Partially because I know there’s so much for me to learn, but also because it feels like EVERYONE else is doing it. I mean, I know that’s not true, but you get what I’m saying, right? It seems like a perfectly admirable quest to fill your mind with the knowledge, experiences and insight of the many hundreds of thousands of authors (if not millions) who’ve produced books since book-binding began. So, why can’t I do it? What’s wrong with me?

But here’s the thing. I’m re-reading a book now, a book that I really loved the first time around. It’s called Daring Greatly by Brene Brown, and I don’t remember how it landed in my hands, but somehow it did. She was a featured speaker at work (one of the perks of working for a global bank is that they sometimes bring in really cool people to speak to us) a few years ago, and I was captivated by her presentation. Anyway, I read her book and highlighted those sentences and passages that made me well up, or hold my breath, or recognise myself. Then I put the book away for a few years.

Now that I’m going through it again, I wonder why I highlighted some of those areas. It makes me think about the version of me that was so moved by her words, that I decided to highlight them. What were the challenges I faced, the worries I had at the time? What was I hoping to learn or who was I striving to become? And then there are other passages that resonate so strongly the second time around, I get that satisfying feeling all over again.

Photo by jose aljovin on Unsplash

This is why I love re-reading books that impact me. The reality is that I’m changing with every passing day. My desires, my hopes, my fears, my joys, my intentions, my perspectives….constantly changing. Revisiting a book that I enjoyed is like reacquainting myself with an earlier version of me, giving me a glimpse into who I was at a previous time.

However, the biggest revelation for me is that I learn something new. Every. Single. Time. Of course I read this passage before, but somehow it didn’t have the same relevance to me then, as it does now.

Can you relate? For example, have you ever enjoyed a movie so much, you find that you re-watch it again and again? And each time you watch it, you discover something new in the dialogue, the music, the facial expressions of the performers, the plot or the storyline? This is exactly what happens to me when I re-read a book. It feels like I unlock a new level of understanding, a new hidden message that didn’t previously occur to me.

The other thing that happens is that it occurs to me how much I can do with the lessons in just one book. Like many people, I can become a junkie for a certain kind of book. Years ago, ‘self help’ books and their authors had developed something of a negative connotation. They were seen as pseudo-scientists or dubious gurus, somewhat annoying and self-righteous. I don’t know what really changed (probably Oprah’s Book Club and her pivot to a more spiritual platform), but the industry exploded and the public’s appetite for what has now been relabelled “self-development”, “personal improvement”, “mindfulness” or “spirituality” content, has grown with it.

I love these books. I can remember the literal shift in my life and my thinking when I finished Eckhart Tolle’s “A New Earth”, Robert Kiyosake’s “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” or Rhonda Byrne’s “The Secret” (I’ll forgive you for rolling your eyes). For whatever the flaws of the authors, or criticisms that can be made of their writings, these books were awakenings for me. And since my shift in reading about 15 years ago, I’ve read many, many more from the now, well-known rock stars of this literary field.

However, I’ve noticed a trend in myself. Let me know if you can relate to this. I read something that absolutely lights me up like a Christmas tree, I feel like I’m on fire, adrenaline coursing through my veins.

Then I want more of that feeling (and invariably the author will have made recommendations of their favourite books on the topic). And like some addict, I fill my Amazon wishlist with books that I want to consume and start my buying-binge. They start arriving and I marvel at the cover, feeling goosebumps as I read the summary on the back and revel in the knowledge that this book, THIS VERY BOOK, will change my life.

Maybe I read it. Or maybe it sits on my bedside table until I give up the lie that I’m going to make time for this book, among all the other stuff I have going on. But let’s say I do read it and do mental cartwheels at how good it is. Will I actually take any action? Will I put the recommendations in place? Or will I go in search of the next and the next and the next hit of book-endorphins?

See, here’s the thing. I’m all for reading as much as possible. Reading has changed my life, no doubt about it. But I need time to digest and reflect on what I’ve read. Sometimes (depending on the subject matter) I’ll need to take specific actions. Other times, I’ll need to sit with the ideas, the experiences of the author and have them reverberate through me. I’m convinced that this process helps me grow and expand as a person, refining the way I approach my self-care, my relationships, my work and the topics that matter to me the most. So, there’s something about racing through book after book that feels like I’m short-circuiting that important process, that experience of letting their lessons wash over me and alter my thinking.

Or maybe I’m just a slow reader.

Don’t get me wrong, if reading loads of books really quickly is your thing and you get optimal value out of doing so, then more power to you. I wish I had the superpower of speed reading. But I know full well that for me, the real superpower is absorbing and being altered by what I’ve read. Maybe that happens anyway and reading more and more just increases that phenomenon in an unconscious way. However, I want to savour the richness of a good book, not feeling overly compelled to pack in more knowledge, more words, even before I’ve had the opportunity to wrestle with what’s right in front of me.

Having said that, read any good books lately?