Reading books is the antidote to everything wrong with modern society
How to shield your mind from a culture that values what's trending over what's timeless.
The most interesting people I know read regularly.
A reading habit doesn’t always equal intelligence, but it does mean curiosity, which I consider just as important.
I find it a good proxy to gauge how much someone values personal growth, and whether someone can focus on one thing at a time. Prolific readers tend to think, write, and speak with more nuance because the ideas they wrestle with are often timeless.
Most people agree books remain the best existing medium for deep learning and immersion within a story or idea. Yet a recent Gallup poll suggests Americans are reading less than ever. That's coincided with a rise in shallow, click-bait content and our collective tendency to reach for a smartphone instead of a book.
Endless notifications and fast-changing trends now determine what's worthwhile, and classic texts that have lasted longer than empires and buildings have been relegated to home decor.
Increasingly, society seems to be stuck in what writer David Perell calls the “never-ending now.” He observed that most of what people consume has been created within the last 24 hours — meaning very little of what we’re exposed to has stood the test of time.
This is a terrible sign if we accept that our content diet determines our thoughts, actions, and values. The moment-by-moment content cycle makes us blind to our place in history and culture.
Our lives lose context while speeding up for the sake of keeping up.
How to read more books
As for me, I read about 50 books a year, and I’ve done that for the last decade. Some people say that's a lot, while others read far more.
There are no hacks, secrets, or shortcuts. I simply make time to sit quietly with a book each day.
I read when I ride the subway. Sometimes I read during meals. Typically I read before bed.
I don’t speed-read or rush. I take my time. I finish a good number of books because reading is a part of my daily routine.
But forcing yourself to do something never lasts. You have to want to do it. To make it a habit, start small and specific. Tie it into what you already do each day.
Read 10 pages upon waking up, for example, or 5 pages every time you have a cup of coffee.
As far as what books to read, this is the best formula to both discover your own interests and make the habit stick:
Read what you love…
…until you love to read
Reading isn’t convenient because it requires time and effort. It doesn’t lend itself to multitasking because you have to pay attention. Like most things though, the more you read the more you can read. Certain books may feel like a slog today, but after six months of reading you could find yourself breezing through them.
That’s why books have such a high return on investment. Everything you read compounds, and that knowledge has the potential to transform into wisdom, which pays dividends over a lifetime.
Reading as an antidote to toxic culture
I find it extra compelling when I meet a reader now because of books’ diminishing role in a distracted, technology-first society. On a given day, far more people you pass on the street will have scrolled TikTok than turned a page in a paperback.
The more smartphones facilitate immediate gratification and easy dopamine, the worse off people seem to be — especially young adults and teens, who arguably need books the most and social media the least.
Books in one sense run counter to contemporary culture. Technology, trends, and the addictions of our peers all conspire to push the pace, while books force us to slow down.
An October 2023 study from the University of Chicago concluded most college students feel trapped into using TikTok and Instagram because they fear missing out on what everyone else is involved in.
The majority of those students, researchers found, said they would actually prefer a world without these apps. An overwhelming number of active users reported negative welfare from them.
But social media isn’t the only headwind that’s turned bookworms into an endangered species. Plenty of platforms vie for our attention.
Worse still is how a number of popular mediums have convinced a great many people they deliver the same intellectual returns as reading, and so should command a similar social status.
Think about podcasts that provide on-demand history lessons or forays into science, for example. While they do lower the barrier to certain high-level material, they also deliver information passively such that they take minimal effort to consume.
It’s certainly convenient that you can knock out podcast episodes while washing dishes or commuting to work, but it cheapens the learning experience — and your attention span — in the process.
Don’t get me wrong, I do like podcasts. But I’ve never listened to one that stuck with me long enough for me to talk about it with any coherence more than a couple days later.
Some books, on the other hand, have stayed with me for years.
Podcasts, social media, and even complex, multi-season Netflix dramas ask too little of the audience. Listeners and viewers take in the content passively. There’s neither participation nor challenge.
In my own experience, I've found limited “stickiness” for non-books content, as far as remembering what I'm supposed to be learning.
Columnist Janan Ganesh wrote a smart take on this earlier this year in the Financial Times:
People are willing to do almost anything other than read at length. It requires patience: an atrophied muscle in the smartphone age. At the same time, no one relishes being ignorant or incurious. The desire for self-improvement out there is real.
One way of squaring these opposing impulses — the bibliophobic, the aspirational — is to give things that aren’t books the intellectual status of books.
You won't love every book you pick up, just like you won't love every social media post your algorithm feeds you, or every show you stream from your laptop.
But remember, what you read compounds, and what you allow to compound matters.
If your entire content diet is TikTok and Twitter, your ability to think deeply will be limited. You won't be nearly as equipped as you could be when you navigate work, conversations, or complex ideas.
"Almost every idea that you have is downstream from what you consume," Atomic Habits author James Clear said. "When you choose who to follow on Twitter, what book to read, what podcast to listen to, you’re choosing your future thoughts.”
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