Books as intellectual friends

Book reading is in decline. So say The Atlantic, The Financial Times (paywall), The Ringer, AP, The Economist (paywall), The New Yorker(paywall) and many more. But we don't need anyone to tell us this, a cursory examination of one's own habits suffice. I know I read fewer non-fiction books than I used to.

A lot of the blame for the collapse in reading has fallen on social media. But I'm not even on social media, so I can't use that excuse. I blame work, the demands of life and prioritising alternative interests. Let's face it, I could read more, but somehow I don't. I often feel too exhausted after a day of work for the focused attention that non-fiction books require. My fallback is to read for entertainment, because it's better than not reading at all. I'm now trying to address this, which makes me currently very interested in how people read, why they read and what it means for society if we're becoming less literate and anti-intellectual.

This is therefore, a good moment to hear the case for reading as excellently made by Brad Delong in his post: Books Can Really Be Your Intellectual Friends. If you think of texts as texts, Delong says, they will become dry and boring. Instead, reframe them as people who are urgently trying to tell you something important that they think you should know.

Let Niccolò Machiavelli remind you: the best intellectual company is always within arm’s reach. Don’t ask “what if your library could talk back?” Recognize that it can and does, if you have the right kind of mind to engage in deep, close, active reading. Shift from thinking of yourself as engaged in an academic ratrace. Instead take the black squiggles on the page that is the information code, and from them spin-up a SubTuring instantiation of the mind of the author of the book, and run it on your wetware. And argue with it.

Thus books transform from dry texts into lively interlocutors—and being able to see that shift might just save your sanity. Treat your books as people, not objects.

In How to read a book, Mortimer J. Adler also observed that "Reading a book should be a conversation between you and the author. Presumably, he knows more about the subject than you do; if not, you probably should not be bothering with his book. But understanding is a two-way operation; the learner has to question himself and question the teacher. He even has to be willing to argue with the teacher, once he understands what the teacher is saying."

Reframing your interaction with a book as a conversation, might help reduce the friction of getting stuck in.

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