Reading is the Goal
To set or not to set - that is the question
Dear Patron,
The end of the year is looming. With only a few days left in December, the time is here to reflect on your year of reading, or perhaps madly try to meet your reading goal. For most readers, it’s also time to tally up the books read in the last year and set reading goals for the next. Perhaps it is unfair to subject the act of reading to what is increasingly becoming a numbers game. It might be more meaningful to look beyond the metrics.
Why do we read books? Why do we hold on to something that is now often deemed a thing of the past or ‘a relic’? Why do we read these tomes, some written before we even existed, some 200 pages or less, and some 800 or more? There are E books, audiobooks, papers, articles, essays, posts, captions, tweets. There is no need to visit a library, go to the bookstore, or lug around dead weight. Why do we do it then?
Reading is inherently good for us. There is immense value in shifting our focus from the constant stimuli of the outside world and devoting a few minutes or hours to pursuing stories and ideas. It gives us the rare ability to slow time, sit with only the voice in our head, and the images that come alive with words. Whether you read 100 books in a year, or just one, the simple act of committing to something that is not required of you, that is a deliberate choice to silence the noise and tap into a creative pursuit is enough.
This begs the question, come the new year, are you planning on setting a reading goal?
My reading goal for 2023 was to read 50 books. I managed 20. In 2022, I read 48 so I upped the number but this year had other plans for me. I feel a tad bit ashamed. More so when Goodreads tallies up my goal against that of my friends or when I can’t help but balk at how many books people have managed to read as shared on social media (some are in the triple digits). I have to grudgingly admit this eats at me a little bit. This race to read the most number of books, pretending we are not competing when in truth we are.
There is another race. To dip into new releases, different genres, authors, sequels, prequels, and special editions. To read fiction, non-fiction, poetry, plays, classics, contemporary. To read in your native language, to read translations, to be more inclusive, to include varied perspectives. To be ‘well read’.
Yes, I know, it sounds impossible. But as any incorrigible bookworm will tell you, that hardly matters. Readers are not only people who read the book at hand. We buy books when we are acutely aware of the unread pile waiting for us. We keep adding books to our shelves with no plans to read them any time soon and get a massive thrill out of the process. We participate in reading challenges. We wonder if we have read enough books written by women authors, from the Asian diaspora, from new Nepali releases. We read multiple books at a time. We are thinking about our next read while halfway through our current one. Reading goals help us make sense of this invisible pressure we put on ourselves.
Setting reading goals helps motivate us and at the end of the year we are filled with a sense of achievement. Not just due to the number of books we read, but how many boxes we managed to check. While goals and numbers that contribute to a better read version of you are a worthy outcome, what you take away from the page is far more important.
So, should you set a reading goal?
I’d argue that you should. When you set a goal to read, you make a promise to yourself that you’re going to commit time to something that serves you. It might encourage you to choose reading a book over habits that don’t serve you — such as mindlessly scrolling through social media or bingeing Netflix.
If you are a serious reader, planning a year’s worth of reading always helps. If you are a mood reader (lucky you!), being more mindful about what you read is a way to make reading a sustainable habit. There are ways to make the numbers and goals worthwhile.
Do not limit yourself to labels. Don’t just read the classics, or romance, or murder mysteries set in idyllic small towns. Don’t make yourself feel like you need to finish the 500 pager over the weekend to keep up.
Read a page every day. Read for ten minutes if that’s all the time you have. Make your way slowly through a book of poetry, savouring a few verses when you can. Read fast-paced fantasy, stacks at a time. Take a whole year to digest War and Peace, one chapter a day. Read children’s books, read with children. Read to pass the time, read to learn, read until the wee hours of dawn because you simply have to witness enemies turn into lovers. Read when you fall in love, read when you are grieving, read to stay afloat. Underline, annotate, write in the margins. Learn about yourself and those different from you, they might not be so different after all. Read. Maybe you’ll smash that goal and read fifty books this year, or maybe only five.
As we transition into a digital age powered by artificial intelligence, we need to find ways to hold onto our collective humanity. Books are a foundation of that collective humanity, spanning over lifetimes and centuries. Let us cherish them the best we can. Not everybody loves to read, it’s a gift for those who do.
Happy New Year,
Sanu Ko Pustakalaya
Newsletter penned by Priyansha Silwal