To many, reading is a paragon of hobbies. If you take the wide spectrum of leisure activities that humans devote much of their lives to pursue, reading sits snugly in the Goldilocks zone: the sweet spot that defines the perfect avocation. Consider the evidence: an interest in philately, numismatics, or collecting trinkets of any kind really, marks you out as someone who spends their weekends caressing their collection albums and murmuring, ‘My precious….’. Opting for a more energetic brand of recreation – like cycling or running, for instance – signals to society that if anyone makes the mistake of approaching you, they will hear about your training regimen in insufferable detail.
Congratulations, You Are A ‘Sophisticate’ Now
On the other hand, reading – as a hobby – offers a number of benefits. You can win any debate so long as you preface your argument with the words, ‘Well, I know that’s what you heard on a podcast but I read in a book…’. When your friends are raving about a new movie, you can declare with a sniff, ‘To be perfectly honest, the book is much better…’. Surrounding yourself with books can earn you the admiration of your peers. You don’t even need to have read them – merely possessing a well-stocked bookcase can make you a sophisticate (ask any interior designer). In these times of snappy reels, clickbait headlines, and dwindling attention spans, book readers are revered as ‘Zen masters’ who can ignore the lure of doomscrolling and immerse themselves in the textual world.
It is no wonder then that so many parents hope their children grow up to be readers, or that countless adults strive to adopt reading as a hobby. Yet, you rarely hear anyone talking about the undiagnosed emotional damage caused by books – anyone who has read A Little Life by Hanya Yanagihara will know what I mean – and the pernicious effects of reading in general. It is about time someone acted to remedy this grave oversight.
That Perpetual Despair…
Allowing yourself to be consumed by a love for books can harm you, broadly speaking, in four significant ways. To begin with, it can cause you to be assailed by a sense of despair, a feeling of crushing hopelessness every time you enter a bookshop. As you browse the shelves and stack volumes in the crook of your arm, you realise you will never get around to reading all the books that call out to you. Some are able to make peace with this doleful reality.
Others, those of a more defiant disposition, refuse to be cowed. They redouble their efforts, but since reading capacity is constrained by physical limits, these efforts end up being channelled solely towards the acquisition of books. The Japanese have an elegant word to describe this condition: tsundoku. It means a penchant for stockpiling books with the genuine intention to read them all – subject only to the minor requirement of first attaining immortality. If you are also afflicted with this malady, do not be disheartened. Karl Lagerfeld is said to have owned over 3,00,000 books. At least, things are not as grim for you (I hope).
Guilt Meets Snobbery
This abundance of material naturally leads to the second pitfall of reading: experiencing guilt. No matter which book you pick up, you are sure to feel a twinge of regret for the ones you’re compelled to set aside. Every time you pull out your favourite Agatha Christie or P. G. Wodehouse title from the bookshelf, you can hear your dusty copy of War and Peace tutting in disappointment. In the library, when you’re lingering in the Young Adult fantasy section – ‘young’ is relative, after all – you can feel Great Expectations glaring at you from across the aisle. Every breezy read – every literary guilty pleasure – is laced with the shame of having abandoned Far from the Madding Crowd after a dozen pages.
A large part of this contrition is attributable to the third ill effect of reading: snobbery.
The Struggle To ‘Belong’
The world of bibliophiles can be alarmingly tribal and each clique has its idiosyncrasies. You have the acolytes of the Russian masters – a bleak lot who can be disqualified from their clan if they ever crack a smile. Crime fiction aficionados tend to sidle up to you, introduce themselves, and then lean in to whisper, “So… what do you think is the best way to get rid of a body?” The devotees of speculative fiction can be identified by their pallid skin, thick glasses, and ability to talk for hours about the genealogy of dragons; and then there are the readers of business management books, who pride themselves on having no imagination.
Every group believes their reading habits to be loftier and they are all perpetually at odds with each other. Indeed, there is only one thing that unites them: a shared loathing for lovers of romance novels, and, let’s be honest, you can see where they’re coming from.
If you do not throw in your lot with any one of these clubs, then you must forever contend with their tidal pulls as you chart your literary journey. As you flit from one genre to the next, you will be welcomed and then mocked, your choice of books forever questioned and dismissed as being inferior to a host of other suggestions. If you somehow muster the will to ignore these challenges and keep going, then you will eventually have to tackle the fourth, and most fatal, misfortune to befall a reader. You will begin to believe that you, too, can be a writer.
‘Can I …. Be A Writer?’
Anyone who spends a substantial amount of time reading books soon begins to harbour fantasies of writing one themselves. It is one of those immutable laws of nature (those who read poetry are – unfortunately for the rest of us – especially susceptible to this affliction). This is one of life’s greatest tragedies because writing is a masochistic, time-consuming and exhausting pursuit. When you choose to become a writer, the only people who suffer more than you are your friends and family members who have to read your early output. It is only because they pretend to enjoy it that you are encouraged to continue. Pick up any celebrated guide on the craft of writing – be it Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott or On Writing by Stephen King – and it will tell you that as a writer you must persevere; you must write with dedication and doggedness, and perhaps one day you will be wildly successful and publish a manuscript that makes a tenth of the sales of the latest book by a social media celebrity.
Most bookworms endure one or more of these ordeals, and yet, astonishingly, they continue to read. Books continue to exist, and some people still find the greatest joy in getting lost in their pages, in weaving stories of their own.Most bookworms endure one or more of these ordeals, and yet, astonishingly, they continue to read. As far as book lovers are concerned, that is a blessing.
(Rohan Banerjee is a writer and lawyer based in Mumbai)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author