There's nothing more human than reading

“When you're growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the Church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you.” - Keith Richards

A practice of becoming

My father commuted into New York City every day for years. On the New Jersey Transit train. And twice a week when my sister and I were young, he'd take us to the Bernardsville Public Library when it reopened in the evening.

Small town life. The library would close at about four in the afternoon, then reopen at seven for evening hours.

He let us kids wander through the kids room, then later back in the stacks, and get any books we wanted. He picked up two or three new novels every time. Each with that cellophane covering the dust jackets. Mostly spy and detective stories. That was how he spent his time on the train. The newspapers and these books. Carried hardcovers in and out of Manhattan every day.

Then, later in the week, he'd bring us back. And return the books he finished or wasn't interested in. And pick up another couple of titles.

It was his ritual.

He loved it.

And it was one of the most important things he taught me. Even more than my mom, the English teacher.

None other than Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones, wanted to become a librarian at one time in his life.

“When you're growing up, there are two institutional places that affect you most powerfully: the Church, which belongs to God, and the public library, which belongs to you,” he said.

Offending sensibilities

Then, one day after I moved to Florida, I had an experience so foreign and offensive to my reading sensibilities that I still have a hard time explaining.

I worked with a client once who used to consistently and publicly make fun of people for reading. In person. In speeches and presentations.

He thought it was wasted time.

To his credit, he didn't denigrate all reading. Just fiction. But on the other hand, I heard him refer to his high IQ far more often than I ever saw him reading anything. Weird for a guy who ran a magazine.

He would say things like don't waste your time reading Agatha Christie novels.

No hits on Aggie, but the fact that his go-to pop fiction writer in the 2020s was Agatha Christie should have been a tell right there.

The regular practice of reading is enormously important. And not just the things that seem important to your business today. Because business is just one thing, it isn’t everything.

It’s work, not life.

What is it? What can it be?

Reading is a good habit like exercise and healthy eating. But it can also be a treat like a bowl of good ice cream or a ride on a roller coaster.

Read other things. Read every day. Just because you want to read.

Pick up a history. Or a biography. Or a memoir. Pick up a pulp detective novel for fun. Read good things. And bad things. It's not wasted time. And never was.

Thomas Jefferson said "A room without books is like a life without meaning.”

Reading every day reduces your stress, improves your mental health, activates your brain, and improves your vocabulary. And so many of us are in need of expanding our vocabulary. And our frame of reference. Reading every day can actually lengthen your life.

Reading fiction, specifically, improves your sense of empathy. And who among us couldn't use a bit of that? Study on the subject says reading fiction regularly helps you sleep, makes you more creative, sparks your memory. It expands your knowledge, improves your use of language, boosts your confidence and analytical skills. 

I don't trust people who never read fiction.

Read biography and you'll learn history and what not to repeat from it.

Read memoir and you'll learn from other peoples successes, but more important, from their failures, too.

Stephen King says he always has a paperback in his pocket wherever and whenever he is so he can crack the spine whenever he's on line for something or waiting for someone.

And you don't need to finish every book you pick up. This was a difficult lesson for me to accept.

But one of the best days of my life was the day I realized I didn't have to finish every book I started.

I used to think of it as a personal failure.

But I'll tell you exactly when it happened.

I was about two-thirds of the way through Infinite Jest and realized I just couldn't take the nested footnotes anymore.

So I tossed it down and picked up something else. Probably a Mark Leyner novel.

It allowed me to judge and feel a bit superior for a moment, even though, I knew I'd go back to finish it one day.

After Hemingway died, it's said they found his copy of Ulysses in his library. And in those days, some publishers still required you to "cut the pages." And his copy had the first three chapters cut. Then nothing until the end where he found Molly Bloom's orgasm speech.

Even the best writers and readers among us don't read everything.

But they listen to what other writers have to say about things and how they say it.

And they learn. And shift their perspective. And challenge their beliefs.

It's why they're the best communicators.

But in the end, they read. All the time. Every day.

And that is the point of it all.