071: .07%
No, this title is not a weird keyboard-smash typo.
Hey friends,
I feel like I say this every week, but I really don’t know where the past [week/month/year] has gone. It’s August? Are we sure?
Yesterday morning I booked a trip for January 2024, the first trip I’ve booked for 2024, and I was momentarily confused because it felt soon even though my brain still thinks it’s April 2023. I’m also applying to a bunch of fellowships right now—writing and research fellowships—and a few of them are for 2025. 2025! They want me to plan my life that far in advance, to be available to them for a month or more in 2025, and to know what I’m going to want to research then! How????
All that got me thinking a lot about the passage of time. There are so many things I want to do and it’s starting to feel like there’s not enough time. I find myself jealous of my younger cousins who graduated from high school or college this summer, their whole lives in front of them. (I know, I know, I’m only 33—but the possibilities seem more limited, suddenly.)
If you’ve been around here long, you know this question of passing time haunts me frequently. I worry about making time to write everything I want to write, I worry about whether I’m laying out my schedules in the most efficient ways, and I worry about how much time I spend worrying.
And this month, as I fall further behind on my Goodreads Reading Challenge, I’m fighting my urge to worry about all the books I won’t have time to read.
The best thing about Goodreads—well, second to peeking at what my friends are reading—is their annual reading challenge. It motivates me to read more because every January I set an ambitious goal of reading x books and usually about halfway through the year I find myself really far behind the weekly average I need to meet to make it. (As I write this, I’m 11 books behind my goal.) And of course, I’m a competitive monster, so seeing that gets me to start reading a lot more in the second half of the year. Also great? Goodreads archives all your reading challenges, so you can always go back and see what you read during a year—and whether you met your goal.
For the last seven years, I’ve averaged reading 58 books per year. Which is a lot, it’s more than 1 per week! I could certainly read a lot more if I didn’t watch as much TV as I do, but, I mean—have you seen the great storytelling going on on television right now? The second season of Good Omens, I mean—a chef’s kiss, truly.
Assuming that I maintain this pace, and hoping that I have 48 years left on Earth, which takes me to the US average women’s lifespan of 81 years old—a decent number that I'm good with living until—that means I have about 2,784 books left that I'll read in my lifetime.
2,784 books is both a lot--it's in the thousands!--and not a lot at all. It’s only 420 books more than my current TBR shelf on Goodreads. And—somewhat terrifyingly—worldwide, there were over 4 million new books published in 2022. 4 million! New! Not reprints, translations, paperback copies of hardcovers—4 million brand-spankin’-new books. It really puts my 2,784 books over my lifetime in perspective! I can reasonably read .07% of the books published in a single year. That's all I've got left!
And, okay, yes—it helps to note that of those 4 million, there are probably a million or two that I have no interest in reading. And at least a million were probably published in a language I can’t read. Even if we assume I would only be interested in 10% of the books published last year, that’s still 40,000 books-a whopping 15 times more books than I’ll be capable of reading in my life.
Okay, now that I’ve got us all in a tizzy.
When I first did this math about five years ago, it gave me permission to start doing something I’d loathed to do until then: Quit reading a book before the end.
I know some of you are gasping into your inbox. The horror! Listen, I know the logic behind finishing a book, even if it’s a slog and you hate it the whole time. What if it gets better? What if the end ties it all together in a way that works and suddenly it was all worth it?
I’m here to tell you that it won’t. If you haven’t liked the first 200 pages of a book, you’re not going to like the last 200. It is incredibly rare that the last 20 pages of a book are going to change your whole opinion of it for the better. So stop reading! The world will not end. It doesn’t mean that the writer is bad, and it’s not a condemnation of the book. But if it’s not for you, then why waste your time with it? You only have time to read so many books in your life!
I think this is easier to make peace with when you’re reading non-fiction because there’s not necessarily “a story” in the same way as a fiction book. Just get the information you need and get out. Read the final chapter if you’re concerned about missing any insights or conclusions.
Recently, I was struggling through an incredibly dense and long novel. I had set out to read it because it was set in early 14th-century Europe and the book I’m currently writing is also set in early 14th-century Europe. There are not a lot of modern books set during this time period! I wanted to read it to see how a 20th-century author treated the 14th century—luckily, the premise also sounded interesting.
It was not an easy book to get through. The cast of characters is huge, and I quickly regretted not taking notes when I first started reading. The narrator would go on long tangents completely unrelated to the central story, and it was driving me crazy. I’d skip 5 or 6 pages at a time, skimming them to make sure I wasn’t missing action, but ultimately just trying to get through it.
If you haven’t liked the first 200 pages of a book, you’re not going to like the last 200.
Finally, I paused and thought, “Why am I doing this?” I searched for the synopsis, to see if it was going to make the book worth finishing. Was I going to be surprised by the conclusion? Did these big sections I was skipping matter?
And the answer was sort of, but not in a fun way, and then yes! The end of that book is often criticized for being sort of weird and nonsensical! It’s a beloved book because those long asides are the author showing off how ridiculously smart he is. And he was! The intellectual world of a 14th-century monastery is rendered perfectly and those debates might be similar to what real monks, scribes, and intellectuals would have been debating at that time.
But I don’t care. I mean, as a historian I sort of care but ecclesiastical debates of the 14th century aren’t my focus. I wanted to like it so much, and I felt kind of bad about not liking a book that is an international bestseller—“Am I wrong? Do I have bad taste?”—but this book just wasn’t for me. And that’s okay!
(The book, by the way, is The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco.)
So I didn’t finish it! And I refused to feel guilty about that, because it meant I could move on to a collection of poetry I’m really enjoying!
And that’s my point here. Stop reading books you don’t like because it’s taking time away from books you could like. I get that some people are going to push back against this—if we only read books we like, isn’t that just creating another echo chamber in our lives? Isn’t that exactly what you were advocating against in this post about expanding the voices inhabiting your bookshelves, Valorie?!
007: What We Read & Who We Care About
And yes! Totally! Read more diverse stories! Read books by authors you’re unfamiliar with, who you don’t share a culture with! Expand your understanding of the world by expanding the voices present on your bookshelves!
But don’t make yourself miserable doing it. If you hate fantasy novels, don’t pick up a fantasy novel just because it’s by an Indian author and you’ve never read a book by an Indian author. That way lies madness. Read genres you already like! Just, you know, please realize that white British authors do not have a monopoly on good fantasy.
(Though, if you’re looking for a good fantasy book by an Indian author, may I recommend The Devourers by Indrapramit Das?)
To paraphrase an unfairly abused Mary Oliver line of poetry: What are you going to read during your one wild and precious life? Why would it be something you hate?
What’s the best book you’ve read this summer? Tell me about it in the comments!
Last week I published the final episode of season 2 of Unruly Figures. It’s all about Mekatilili wa Menza, a freedom fighter in Kenya in the early 20th century. Her story is one of resilience, determination, and women coming together to fight invaders—in short, it’s awesome.
For Sprudge, I wrote up a guide to the great coffee shops of the LA Arts District. If you’re coming to LA and you love coffee, this is a great neighborhood to start in.
Just FYI, some of the links here are affiliate links. That just means that if you click through and buy something, I’ll receive a few cents of profit but it won’t change the price for you.
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