Rediscovering Reading (Without the Social Media Part)

One January morning I relaxed on my couch in the mid-morning light of a slow-starting day. The kid had been delivered to school and I was back home. It was a cold winter morning so the city was quiet. I read with a coffee at hand. It was a relaxing experience and a sense of basic serenity I’d not felt in a long time. The pleasure of this moment made me realize how much I had drifted away from spending significant time reading for pleasure. The journey to get here started, strangely enough, at work.

Last September I joined Microsoft. Satya Nadella’s book Hit Refresh came up a lot. I had multiple independent suggestions that, especially as a non-Windows person, I should read it. Microsoft runs an internal library and it has an e-book lending program through Libby. I set it all up and discovered that Microsoft has no e-book copies of Hit Refresh. I was surprised and still haven’t figured out what this means.

However, setting all this up reminded me that I have access to a second library’s holdings on Libby. I found the book and read it. Around this same time, people in a work chat started talking about the MurderBot Diaries series. The library had that too, so I downloaded it and read it as well.

By January, I realized that as I’d removed toxic or scrolling-oriented social media from my life I’d replaced it with almost exclusively non-fiction medium/long-form journalism and blogs. I’d stopped reading purely for pleasure and books altogether.

As I pondered this change, I mentioned it in a call with Ben. Ben is both a friend and, at times, an aspirational idol. He mentioned that he has been challenging himself to read more books and has been doing so publicly on StoryGraph. A site designed to share and “gamify” reading books felt like the kind of accountability and fun I needed. I opened an account and jumped in.

Now, several books and several months later I’m realizing that reading is for me. Doing so publicly is fine, but a dedicated social site isn’t for me. There is nothing wrong with StoryGraph; it just is not for me. To this end, I’ve started a public book log. Follow along if that’s your jam. I think it important for me to have a log and a bit of a ritual around reading. I hope this is the solution.

With my newfound Libby book source I’ve decided to focus on borrowing rather than buying. This is in line with a preference for not owning too many things that I’ve had for the last decade or so. In my mind, ebooks I read once feel unnecessary to own. For things I can’t easily borrow I’ll keep using eReaderIQ to track ebook prices.

An unexpected benefit of a focus on borrowing has been having to wait for holds to get filled. For example, the wait for the second Three-Body problem book was about 4-5 weeks. This is the first time I’ve engaged with the slow- movement in a way that resonated with me. At first, I was just happy that my inability to instantly acquire the next book was allowing me to get other things done as I tend to binge-read good books to the exclusion of other things.

The upshot of all of this is that I am reading more books and less bite-sized, scroll-feed information or journalism that just raises my blood pressure. I’m still reading blogs and other articles of interest, but it is now done with a lot more intentionality. I’ve done so in a way that slows me down, makes me more mindful, and doesn’t add clutter to my life. I am going to log what I read publicly in case someone wants to engage with me about it or I need to share details with someone when a book comes up in conversation. These feel like wins.

Note: Where possible, I’ll link what I’m reading or have read to StoryGraph. I’d like them to have the traffic and be strong in the market both as a statement to their own success and to provide the balance and competition healthy markets require.