For many people, reading is the ideal of hobbies. If you take the wide range of leisure activities that human beings spend most of their lives doing, reading sits comfortably in the Goldilocks zone: the sweet spot that defines the perfect hobby. Consider the evidence: an interest in philately, numismatics, or collecting trinkets of any kind, marks you out as someone who spends their weekends caressing their collection albums and saying ‘My dear…’. Choosing a more energetic brand of recreation – such as cycling or running, for example – signals to society that if anyone makes the mistake of approaching you, they will hear about your training in unbearable detail.
Congratulations, you are now a ‘sophisticated person’
On the other hand, reading as a hobby offers a multitude of benefits. You can win any argument provided you start it with the words, ‘Well, I know this is what you heard on the podcast, but I read in the book…’. When your friends are raving about a new movie, you can sneer and say, ‘In all honesty, the book is so much better…’. Surrounding yourself with books can earn you the admiration of your peers. You don’t even have to read them – just having a well-stocked bookcase can make you a sophisticated person (ask any interior designer). In this age of snappy reels, clickbait headlines and dwindling attention spans, book readers are hailed as ‘Zen masters’ who can ignore the lure of doomscrolling and immerse themselves in the textual world.
So it’s no wonder that so many parents hope their children grow up to be readers, or that countless adults attempt to adopt reading as a hobby. Yet, you rarely hear anyone talk about the unintended emotional damage books can cause—even those who have read books a short life Read Hanya Yanagihara’s book and you’ll see what I mean – and what the harmful effects of reading in general are. It’s time someone took action to correct this serious oversight.
That constant disappointment…
Letting your love for books overwhelm you can harm you in roughly four important ways. First, it can engulf you with a sense of hopelessness, filling you with a sense of despair every time you enter a bookstore. As you look at the shelves and hold books in the elbow of your arm, you realize that you will never be able to read all the books that fascinate you. Few people are able to make peace with this sad reality.
Others, who are more rebellious in nature, refuse to be intimidated. They redouble their efforts, but since the ability to read is hindered by physical limitations, these efforts are focused only on acquiring books. The Japanese have a beautiful word to describe this situation: TsundokuThis means a tendency to collect books, and a sincere intention to read them – only under the simple condition of achieving immortality. If you suffer from this disease, don’t despair. Karl Lagerfeld is said to have over 300,000 books. At least, things aren’t so bad for you (I hope).
A union of guilt and pride
This abundance of content naturally leads to the second disadvantage of reading: experiencing guilt. No matter what books you pick up, you’ll surely have a feeling of regret for the books you’re forced to put aside. Every time you pull your favorite Agatha Christie or PG Wodehouse title off the bookshelf, you can hear your dusty copy groaning war and Peace muttering in frustration. At the library, when you sit late in the young adult fantasy section – ‘young’ is relative, after all – you can feel Great expectations Staring at you from across the aisle. Every breezy read – every literary guilty pleasure – is tinged with the shame of being abandoned far from the Madding Crowd After a dozen pages.
A large part of this remorse is due to the third bad effect of reading: pride.
The struggle to maintain ‘belonging’
The world of book lovers can be dangerously tribal and each group has its own idiosyncrasies. You have the followers of Russian gurus – a sad group who can be disqualified from their tribe if they ever smile. The crime fiction buff comes up to you and introduces himself and then whispers, “So… what do you think is the best way to get rid of a corpse?” The devotees of fantasy fiction can be identified by their pale skin, thick glasses and ability to talk for hours about the lineage of dragons; and then there are the readers of business management books, who pride themselves on their lack of imagination.
Every group believes their reading habits are top notch and they’re all always disagreeing with each other. In fact, there’s only one thing that unites them: a shared hatred for lovers of romance novels, and, honestly, you can see where they’re coming from.
If you don’t join any of these clubs, you will always have to deal with their ups and downs as you chart your literary journey. You will be welcomed and then mocked as you move from one genre to another, your book choices will always be questioned and judged as inferior to other suggestions. If you somehow manage to muster the will to ignore these challenges and keep going, you will eventually have to deal with the fourth and most deadly misfortune that befalls a reader. You will start believing that you too can be a writer.
‘Can I become a writer?’
Anyone who spends a lot of time reading books soon begins to fantasize about writing one themselves. It’s one of the immutable laws of nature (people who read poetry are – unfortunately for the rest of us – particularly susceptible to this affliction). It’s one of life’s great tragedies because writing is a masochistic, time-consuming and exhausting task. When you decide to become a writer, the only people who suffer more than you are your friends and family members who have to read your early works. It’s only because they pretend to enjoy it that you’re encouraged to keep going. Pick up any well-known guide on the art of writing – whether it’s a novel or a novel. Bird by bird by Anne Lamott or On Writing by Stephen King – and it will tell you that as a writer you must persevere; you must write with dedication and persistence, and maybe one day you will be hugely successful and publish a manuscript that earns a tenth of the sales of some social media celebrity’s latest book.
Most book lovers suffer one or more of these afflictions, and yet, amazingly, they continue to read. Books still exist, and some people still find the greatest joy in getting lost in their pages, weaving their own stories.Most book lovers suffer one or more of these afflictions, and yet, amazingly, they continue to read. As far as book lovers are concerned, this is a blessing.
(Rohan Banerjee is a Mumbai-based writer and lawyer)
Disclaimer: These are the personal views of the author
