The Case For Reading

When I was a kid I spent a lot of my free time reading fantasy novels and nature books. It was something I just naturally gravitated towards. No one around me read very much, and no one explained to me why it was a good thing to do. I just enjoyed it, and whether it was a good thing or not was irrelevant to me. I liked movies and tv shows of course, but nothing was as fully captivating to me as a book.

As I progressed through school, reading became a chore—a story that I know is not unique to me. It was something that had to be done. Read a book. Analyze it across the dimensions you’ve been taught. Get a good grade if you give an adequate analysis according to your teacher. Get a bad grade if you deviate. Repeat.

I still enjoyed reading. I even enjoyed some of the chore books like The Iliad and The Odyssey. But through high school my life got busier and since there was no apparent reason to spend any of my time reading—no one ever explicitly said why you should read—I virtually stopped reading altogether.

The extent of my “reading” from age 18 to 22 was just a handful of audiobooks. Then the world shut down in 2020 and I read 60 books in 10 months. I continue to read every day with no plans to stop.

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When I think of advice to give younger people, I struggle to come up with many things without feeling like a fraud. As a 23-year-old guy who hasn’t accomplished much, it seems like maybe I’m not the person to give advice. I doubt teenage me would listen to current me—just based on lack of tangible success or awards—and it would be a very fair criticism for teenage me to make. I am definitely not an expert on anything in life yet, aside from maybe thrifting and reselling. However, I can confidently tell younger people “read and read a lot”.

Reading is a beautiful thing because it allows you to learn from the mistakes of others. As mortal creatures we are blessed and cursed with only having a limited time here to: do stupid things, learn from said stupid things, and adjust. However, with books an entire lifetime can be synthesized into a few hundred pages or a few hours of your time. While touching a hot stove may really drive home the point that you shouldn’t touch a hot stove, reading about what happens when you touch a hot stove should suffice. If you get an infection, you may not have the time to accidently discover penicillin. But thankfully the discovery and how to produce it was written down. Instead of spending decades tinkering, you can read about people who tinkered before you. You can accumulate many lifetimes of knowledge from books.

Another advantage to reading is it allows you to find an explore interests. When you’re 17 it’s almost a certainty that you don’t know what you want to do with your life. You haven’t lived long enough to find out what’s worth your time or what keeps you meaningfully engaged. And if you do know what you want to do by the age of 20, consider yourself extremely lucky. For the majority of young people who don’t know what to do, the best advice I can give is to read about what you think may interest you. The books you are interested in—as well as the ones you aren’t interested in—will guide you. For me, my interest in philosophy grew into curiosity about psychology, religion, and history. Books about World War II inevitably made me want to learn about the Soviet Union and the human atrocities of the 20th century: the Holocaust, the gulags, the rape of Nanking. Books will guide your interests and your interests will guide the books you read. Pay attention to which ones speak deeply to you.

After you’ve decided what you want to do, books can help to make you an expert in any given field. If one wants to become a great therapist, they don’t have to undertake the journey alone. They can be aided by the works of Freud, Jung, Rogers, and Piaget. Someone aspiring to become a great military leader can consult Sun Tzu, David Hackworth, Miyamoto Musashi, and Carl von Clausewitz. As Joseph Campbell said “we have not even to risk the adventure alone; for the heroes of all time have gone before us. The labyrinth is thoroughly known … we have only to follow the thread of the hero path”. The labyrinth of your field is at least partially known, and all you have to do is consult those who came before you.

Most importantly, reading will make you more articulate. You will inevitably be able to convey thoughts more clearly and precisely. Being able to speak proficiently goes far beyond just talking. You will actually improve your thinking, because what is thinking if not speaking with yourself. You will learn words to to convey feelings and ideas that you were unable to articulate before. Books will give you the words to speak.

There is nothing more powerful than someone who can think and speak. A person who can communicate ideas is both influential and respectable. In addition, if you read you will actually have things to talk about. The more things you know, the more topics you can comfortably talk about with other people. You may meet someone with a background completely foreign to your own and you will be unable to come up with anything interesting to say or ask if you are completely ignorant to their upbringing and interests. Who wants to be the bore at the party who only knows about reality TV and the latest trend? Your conversations will remain shallow and unfulfilling if you don’t actually have anything of substance to talk about. And how could you have anything of substance to talk about if you don’t know anything?

The only advice I can give to young people—and old people alike—is to read and read a lot.