Well Read

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Location: Academy of Athens – Athens, Greece

Words have returned to their place of prominence in my life since I wrote about the fact that I sometimes (allow myself to) forget I’m a writer. I bought a new journal, one to keep next to my bed so I can just jot down whatever comes to mind. (I’ve often found, like Salvador Dali, that I get my best ideas in the moment just before I fall asleep.) And, for reasons I can not yet explain, I have written not one, but two poems. My first (and second) in over a decade.

Maybe it was just a matter of time. After years of feeling too busy for books, I started reading regularly again halfway through 2018 – and I haven’t looked back. There is a constant (and ever-changing) stack of books on my coffeetable. Novels, poetry, history… it doesn’t really matter. If there are words printed on paper, I will read them (even if I disagree with them.)

Whatever the reason, I am both writing and reading again. So it struck me as interesting timing when an online acquaintance asked me, “How many books does a person have to read to be well read?”

After meditating on the subject for about a week, I realised that I struggled to answer the question because it asks the wrong thing. To me, the question should be, “What makes a person well read?” And to me being well read, like most things in life, isn’t about quantity, but quality. It is not a question of how many books you read, but which ones you choose.

When I consider my return to books – both the reading and writing of them – this answer is the only one that makes sense. In my teens and early twenties, I read voraciously, but I was utterly indiscriminate in my book choices. Most of what I read was, as a result, unmemorable. There are, in fact, some books that I’ve found myself unintentionally rereading because I recall so little of their plotlines from my first venture into them. I read a lot now, but I will never achieve the prodigious annual book counts of my youth. And that’s fine.

At twenty-four, I read Twilight. Not just the book, the entire series. Most of the Harry Potter series, too. At thirty-four, I wouldn’t waste my time – I would rather dive into something that will challenge me intellectually (or emotionally. Submission by Michel Houllebecq was one of the hardest books I’ve ever read. I despise everything the mysognistic author, and his plot, which essentially advocates for the return of women to a position of social and domsetic subordination, stand for. But I started it. And I managed to finish it.) I read books that make me think. Books that I can discuss with other people, even strangers, in terms that extend beyond, “I loved it!” and, “It was so addictive.”

It’s important to recognise that not everyone wants to be well read. Reading anything at all is always preferable to reading nothing. If you love Harry Potter, those are exactly the books you should choose. The same goes for Twilight, and anything written by Danielle Steele (or any of her ilk.) I can personally admit to a guilty pleasure for all the novels staring Lisbeth Salander. But those books do not make me well read. They just mean I’ve read books that I could easily purchase at the airport or in a grocery store, the same way I might pick up a chocolate bar.

To me, being well read is a question of choices. But I suspect this question, while simple on the surface, will prove to be relatively divisive, so tell me – what do you think makes a person well read?

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