The violent act of reading

I had a series of long conversations with my wonderful colleagues today. And as I was reflecting on them, what surprised me was the number of times I kept talking about reading: why they should read, why I read, how reading has helped me, and all the endless virtues of reading.

I think everybody wants to read. But people don’t necessarily like the act of reading.

Or rather, let me put it this way: people would love to have read, but don’t want to go through the drudgery of picking up a book, planting one’s arse somewhere, and immersing themselves in it.

Sitting quietly—let alone with a book, or with one’s own thoughts—is a deeply unnatural activity in the 21st century.

But anyway, I was thinking about these conversations and wondering why I kept harping on the importance of reading. And the phrase that kept popping into my head was:

Reading changes who you are.

And here, I don’t mean the typical clichéd bullshit people peddle about reading: that it makes you smart, teaches you things, and so on and so forth. All of that may be true.

But to read the right book—to read a genuinely good book—is to commit a violent assault on who you are. It is an act of killing the self that picked up the book.

Because once you have read a good book, you are no longer the same person. The person who existed before picking it up has been murdered.

A good book exposes the shape of your ignorance. It changes what you notice, what you question, and how you see the world.

Of course, you can always read the wrong book and become a serial killer. But that aside, to read a good book is to give yourself permission to become someone else.

And I think that is enough.

Good books don’t need defenders to speak on their behalf. They are perfectly capable of defending their own substance and virtue. They certainly don’t need feeble minds like mine to speak up for them.

But to the extent that one needs a reason to read, isn’t the possibility of metamorphosis reason enough?

You enter through the front cover, and by the time you emerge from the final page, you are no longer quite the same person.

What greater gift can you give yourself?