The joy of reading
I read for a living — dense, often turgid prose; but it gets easier with the passing of time (doesn’t everything?).
And yet, I still find time to read for pleasure.
Right now, I’m deep into capitalism, Karl Marx and a few lines from the book Infinite Resignation by Eugene Thacker.
But it doesn’t matter what I’m reading, I always find myself immersed in the subject, lost in the reverie of the word and under the spell of remembrance.
I also listen to a lot of audiobooks, which is particularly enjoyable when you find a book written by and narrated by the author. One book that I return to often is Come of Age: A Case for Elderhood in a Time of Trouble by Stephen Jenkinson which, as you can guess from the title, is more resonant now . . . than ever.
Not that I’m in the business of judging others, and not to the degree of my obsession!, but I do wonder why my kids’ generation and indeed mine appear to make so little time for reading. It would be too simplistic to say that the mobile phone has destroyed the capacity to be lost in another epic, masterpiece or even a bit of escapism but imagine if the same level of dedication and/or sophistication was ascribed to the daily ritual of doom scrooling as was reading one page a day of a book.
I know in my case that, absent books, I’m not sure how I’d (now) engage with the world particularly as regards the Anthropocene, the aging process and trying to come to terms with the power struggles that continue to loom large on a daily basis.
As a side issue, I have amassed both digitally and physically around 6,000 books (at the last count) and I do wonder what will become of them when I’m gone. I’d love to see them donated to the local library but knowing how these things work, I suspect that’ll be more trouble than it’s worth and they’ll either be disposed of to a charity (again, that will be a headache) or buried in a landfill.
Anyhow, I’d love to know your thoughts both on reading and its absence.
Blessings,
Julian
PS. This morning’s listening on Spotify