When did reading become a chore?

We’ve started talking about reading “backlogs”, about “to be read” piles, about adding recommendations “to our reading lists”. We have apps like GoodReads to ensure we track our reading, cataloguing what we’ve managed to check off, and managing an ever growing mountain of pages to be worked through in the near (or not so near) future.

We write end of year posts covering our previous year’s reading, have our digital books encourage us to keep daily streaks going, and set reading goals for what we want to do. We construct elaborate note taking, highlighting, reviewing, and cataloguing strategies to ensure we not only enjoy the books we’re reading, but also extract maximum value from them. We feed those outputs into spaced retention systems to aid in memorisation and internalisation.

We voraciously chow down on this endless buffet of words, gleefully adding more to the end than we’ll ever consume. We stare guiltily at the piles of books by our beds and sofas, bookmarks revealing our failures to complete, holding us to account for broken promises.

Reading turned into work.

I say fuck that noise. You want to take notes, fine. I do. You want to pull particular quotes out and have them sent to you periodically when you might need the reminder? Sure, why not.

But let’s stop seeing our beautiful collections of books as simple chores — as items to be checked off.

They’re so much more, so let’s start respecting that and realising that we don’t have reading lists.

We have libraries. And libraries are awesome.