I would be repeating a conventional wisdom as old as history.
One of the faculties that differentiate our species as a sentient animal is the capacity for storytelling. We can create narratives which give our lives meaning and to better understand our environments. We invented languages and we can draw symbols and codes for sounds with meanings, an operating system for our brain which allows us to communicate more effectively and efficiently.
A single cell organism evolved into a complex living form because it learned how to exchange information. The exchange is necessary to survive and thrive. With books and written words, we can preserve and disseminate information. Making us collectively intelligent, and better individuals.
People who read have always been positioned at the higher string of societies. The brahmins and the druids are the intellectual class. Even the warriors, the kings, consulted and revered them. The priests and scribes of ancient Egypt did not have to do backbreaking labour and sat with the pharaohs.
Knowledge is power and a prerequisite for wisdom. Ignorance is the root of negative thoughts.
When you read books rather than news, your vision extends its timeline.You are less likely trapped in short-termism and provincialism. You’d be less encumbered by petty affairs and gossip.
You’d realise that most of your daily problems are not exclusively yours and, most of the time, there have been people who have found the solutions—either objective or subjective.
Reading good books has compounding benefits. You will be smarter by each book. They are written by humankind’s best minds. They are nuanced. The authors took their time and effort to reflect and contemplate, to research and observe, rather than being reactionary to the current events of their time.
The non-fiction teaches you the advent of human knowledge at that time and place, the zeitgeist and the platgeist. Even debunked ideas became precedents for new ideas. A paveway to the truth, by way of logical and empirical approaches.The fictions, although they are stories—lies—they enrich you by positing the underlying truth. Reading fiction is a training in critical thinking. By reading lies, you recognise the truth.
Reading fiction also enhances your artistic perception and emotional sensitivity. It develops your social skills and makes you a better conversationalist. A real asset, a necessity if you’re an extrovert who enjoys the company of people like me.
The capacity to enjoy reading is the capacity to be patient and to wait. Even before I meditated, books got me through many dull hours of life. The transitory moments such as airports, commutes, queues, or recently quarantines and lockdowns; you can be amused and educated by geniuses at such down time.
Unlike social media feeds, books are never over-stimulation and information overload. They require focus, not mindless scrolling. Consuming books for one hour will make you accomplish something, unlike that bloated and dizziness after scrolling the screen.
This is not to say social media is useless. It is just that their benefits are not as great as they advertised. In the end, social media companies are the attention merchants—an advertising industry. They are incentivised to overstimulate the users. Outrageous statements, vulgar images and words; the platform’s algorithms are designed to use and abuse our empathy and bias to ensure engagement and addiction. Our loneliness and insecurities are prodded.
We need to take control of our lives. Redesign your living and working space, create friction and make yourself less accessible to social media. Surround yourself with more books. Take books to the toilet instead of your smartphone.
One of the best feelings in life is to finish a good book, especially in the morning. It is a good use of life. Power is to have the initiative to assert control over your own world. When your inner self is in order, regardless of the external chaos.
Books purchases are high value consumerism. When you’re itching to buy things to feel that jolt of excitement from getting shiny new stuff—the promise of a novel experience by acquiring one of the apex of cultural expressions last much longer than any brand new gadgets that you don’t really need (and will feel obsolete within 6 months).
Even when you give away or sell the books, the knowledge and the reading experience will stay with you until your mind fails you. Books are never so much the physical papers, or the binary code. Just like money is not the papers and coins or the blockchain.
I have never made a bad purchase on books. Even for books which I haven’t read yet (or never). If it’s meant to be, I’d read the book sooner or later. If they take up too much space, I’d just donate them. In cases of books I don’t finish, reading certain parts have already developed my knowledge or, at the very least, satisfy my curiosity and thirst for something new.
As I read more books, I can tell which books will hook me better. Just by reading the blurbs and reviews. In any case, the risks of buying bad or unread books are compensated by the immense potential returns of acquiring and reading good books. Books can change your life as they can change your perspectives.
You’d learn more; earn more; travel more; and live more. You only have one life, but by reading books you’ve got the chance to immerse yourself in the lives of other people—real or fictional.
The brain is muscles and reading is an exercise for the brain. As muscles, they wither without use and strengthen with regular training. Your mind would be sharp and stay sharp longer.
Reading books can expand your innate talents. You are not merely stuck with the cards you have been dealt with. I could not read when I was 7. I was lagging behind my peers; I lacked the capacity to focus. I didn’t read books regularly until I entered professional life. English books, imported books, are expensive for people from low income countries. I could have made use of the school and university’s libraries when I was a student, but my late teens and early twenties were full of infatuations. They said student life is about books, parties, and love but I was too focused on love. Social media was not ubiquitous yet I was so distracted.
When I entered the workforce, I began to earn disposable income. I can spend my wage on books. The first book I bought with my own money was Truman Capote’s In Cold Blood. I fell in love with Capote’s simplicity and rhythms in composing words. Capote’s writings are unlike the classic writers available in the Indonesian public libraries.
I had to make a significant effort to finish In Cold Blood. It took several months. Then I bought the next books, and next. Salman Rushdie, Ernest Hemingway, George Orwell, Neill Gaiman, Eiji Yoshikawa, Haruki Murakami, Orhan Pamuk, Richard Dawkins, Alain de Bottom, Herman Hesse, Oliver Sacks, Albert Camus, Susan Sontag, Roland Barthes, Yuval Noah Harari, Nassim Nicholas Thaleb, Malcolm Gladwell, Hugo Pratt, Mahfud Ikhwan, Goenawan Mochammad, Carl Sagan, Anton LaVey, Jonathan Haidt, Carl Jung, Viktor Frankl, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Elena Ferrante, Natsume Soeseki, Charles Bukowski, David Whyte, Yoshihiro Tatsumi, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Voltaire, Nietzche, Fujiko Fujio, Osamu Tezuka, D’Aulaires, Bernadine Evaristo, Intan Paramaditha, Joshua Fields Milliburn, and so on.
Of many things that I worship, intelligence is my prime god. I respect cleverness. And reading books is still the best way to learn, to satiate your curiosities, to be smarter and wiser.
I first started taking the annual reading challenge in 2016. I wanted to know how many books I can read in a year–to be more disciplined in my reading habit and to be less distracted by social media. I set the target at 12 that year but managed to read 24 books. The next year, I set 24 books as a target but then a friend set 48 books for herself. She’s the founder of a biotechnology startup. I realised I need to be more ambitious, so I matched her annual challenge. I met that target, but I don’t think I can multiply the challenge by the dozen anymore. In 2021, I broke my personal record by reading 57 books.
The number is not inclusive of books I didn’t finish, great articles I read in periodicals, law books I read for research and work related matters, and blog posts. But as Umberto Eco said, the more you read, the more your collection of books becomes an anti-library. There are too many books to be read in one’s lifetime and brain capacities. The ocean of sapiens’ knowledge is so vast.
Yet the ocean is not the universe.
My 2021 book of the year is Ethan Hawke’s Bright Ray of Darkness. The book was recommended by Post Santa, my favourite local bookstore. I can’t deny I chose it out of the relatability factor. I may not be a Hollywood actor, but I am a privileged heterosexual male who is sensitive. I have always been a fan of Ethan Hawke. The Before Trilogy are my favourite films about romantic relationships.
For non-fiction, there are two books which are essentially one: Henri Cartier-Bresson’s The Mind’s Eye and Interviews and Conversations. 2021 was the year I realised that I am passionate about photography. Photography is a way for me to live more intensely, the means to an end that is to be interested in life. Grandmaster HCB articulated that. Reading HCB was a philosophical education on existentialism practice, a meditation, not just artistic pursuits.
The Goodreads reading challenge is a good way to adopt reading habits. You measure what you read. While the quantitative does not always reflect the qualitative, there is a certain quality in quantity alone. At a certain quantitative point, when you have found your taste in reading, you’d read good books.
There are many ways to achieve your reading challenge target. Mine is to surround myself with books, to make books accessible all the time. I always bring a book with me, paper or preferably Kindle. I follow Post Santa’s Instagram account for personalised curated recommendations. I import books from Amazon, as they have the largest collections and their deliveries are reliable. But most importantly, I have a fellowship of readers. This fellowship transcends time and place, from ancient sages to internet friends.
