All The Books

There are so many books, and not enough time to read them. That is one of the greatest agonies in life. And I should know – I’ve been wrestling with this problem for a long while now, searching always for a way to solve it, and it sometimes drives me to distraction. How can I read my way through that list of “The One Hundred Greatest Nineteenth-Century Novels”, that stack of non-fiction by my desk, and the complete works of Ernest Hemingway?

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I can only read the pages at a moderate tempo, for “speed reading” literature is an insult to the works and a disservice to yourself, and I can only track a few books at a time. (And even reading “a few” books at a time is a kind of problem: it provides variety, yes, but it also creates confusion and prevents immersion in a single work.) What if I join a book club? Or a reading challenge? What if I listen to an audiobook while I run and read a book at a bedtime, and another at breakfast, and one more on the train to work??

Of course, it’s a lovely problem to have – the problem of too many wonderful books. Yet sometimes you could wish for a limited selection, a stack of three (or a pile of one) that you simply have to read and relish. That would simplify things nicely. As my girlfriend pointed out last weekend, though, that is already really the case – you can only read one book at any given moment, and so you should just treat it as the only book there is, and thoroughly enjoy it. Don’t think about Middlemarch (1871) while you’re reading Jane Eyre (1847). They’re both great, and you’ll get to the next one in good time, so just rejoice at where you’re at and when you are. That is all that you can do.

Having taken that excellent advice, then, I have tried to reduce my stress about reading all the books. I have still got my list of Nineteenth-Century novels to get through, and that tower of non-fiction still remains, and Hemingway is still glowering in the corner with a glass of whiskey and a pair of boxing gloves. But I’m trying to be alright with that, and I’m trying to only read my latest choice: Charles Dickens’s Great Expectations (1860).

An important question, however, still lingers…

Why do we want to read all the books?

Maybe it’s just excitement and the love of literature. Or maybe it connects to something deeper. Maybe we’re insecure in our profession or our social circle, and feel that everyone around us is a better reader and a more accomplished person? Maybe we’re uncomfortable about the fact of our mortality, and we read in a hurry just to try and finish one more book before the reaper catches up with us? Maybe we’ve been sold a lie by capitalism – told that more for the sake of more is always better, and that less is just embarrassing. Maybe we’re upset about something else, and the feeling of reward we get from finishing (or even just from purchasing!) one more text is enough to hold back the gloom for another afternoon… It could be the desire to learn, that noble virtue which (as Marlowe’s Dr Faustus [c.1592] tells us) promptly decays into an overwhelming vice… Whatever the case may be, perhaps we should address the fundamental issue – or, at least, simply recognise it. And then we should get back to reading slowly, and deliberately, and patiently, with kindness for ourselves and with a deep respect for the writing.

In one of his letters, Seneca wrote that ‘A multitude of books only gets in one’s way. So if you are unable to read all the books in your possession, you have enough when you have all the books you are able to read’ (Letters from a Stoic, 33). He then adds that we should ‘always read well tried authors, and if at any moment you find yourself wanting to change from a particular author, go back to ones you have read before’ (34). In other words, he advises us to read a few books and to read them well. That is a wise proposition, and — while we’re on the subject — you really ought to read Letters from a Stoic when you get the time.

Haha.

References

Seneca. Letters from a Stoic. Trans. Robin Campbell, Penguin Books, 2004.