Shreyas has occassionally expressed alarm about the number of books and magazines on the floor of my room. Like… why are there so many? This is a great question. I recently, slightly sadly, had to put a book that had been on the floor (in two flats no less) back onto the shelf, as an acknowledgement that I wasn’t reading it. But lo and behold, three weeks later it was back on the floor: an expression of hope in my future self, that she will read this book eventually.

I was contemplating this glut of books, and their home on the floor, on the bike ride home from the beach today. Why do I keep so many books on the floor? Because I want to be reading them, of course. But how many books do I want to be reading? Many, many more than the 5-10 that live on the carpet. I suddenly saw my live as a dizzying, deep expanse of more books than it will ever be possible to read: the sense that there are more books than I know what to do with will never go away. There will always be more knowledge/more discourse/more understanding/more anger/more hope contained in writing than I will ever be able to absorb. I am only one person, and I also do a lot of things that aren’t reading (shockingly!).

The thought of this abundance of books has previously helped me with a bad habit: the desire to finish books that I wasn’t enjoying. This stopped when I did some ballpark maths: if I live for another 50 years, and read an average of 75 new books a year (this may be an optimistic number) then I have 3750 books left to read in my life. There are thousands of books published each year, many of which I’d like: why would I waste any of my time on one that I feel completely certain I’m not gaining anything from. I recently applied this logic to just drop a book a friend had recommended that I was maybe 75% through because the prose was leaden, the tone bizarre, and there was a completely unquestioned main character who was supposed to be a tragic hero because he had been injured while part of the US army in Iraq.
(Ironic sidenote: I have an unfinished blog post about all the books/movies/tv I didn’t finish in 2023. haven’t finished the blog post either.)

But I think there’s something beyond the instrumentalism of books I want to read = don’t read stuff you’re not enjoying. Not just that something wanting to read a book doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it. There’s something in the mechanism of desire itself. I would much rather have dozens upon dozens of books I want to read, some of which live on my floor, than not want to read anything at all. Even if the wanting is inherently futile, because I will never read all the books I want to read, even if they live on my floor.

What I achieve through wanting to read is different to what I achieve from reading. Reading is a deepening of response to the world: to have more tools and knowledge and curiousity and desire about what it is to be alive. It’s a way to go beyond my many, many limitations of knowledge and field: to open the door to rooms full of other ways of being. To avoid being too instrumental: I don’t read because I know I’ll get these feelings from a book (or article etc.), but because I don’t know what the book might contain (although I might have some expectations).

Wanting-to-read, the desire itself, isn’t about the external world at all. It’s about my internal state: an expression of how I long to know more of what it is to be human, of emotions and situations beyond my skin, of places and people I’ve never met. I am enchanted by the abundance: there is so much out there that I will never, never know, and I can’t be unhappy about it.Wanting to read something is its own kind of pleasure, because there is also something beautiful about not-knowing, and having the possibility to learn. Reading helps me to know how other people are alive, and wanting to read reminds me that I am alive too, desire to know prickly and hungry and beautiful, purpling my skin.