It will probably not come as a surprise to anyone that I love reading books, and I know a lot of other people who also love reading books. Periodically, I see people sharing articles about how reading books is good for you. According to assorted studies, reading makes you smarter, healthier, and more empathetic.
Well. As a writer, I’m here to say, while I am obviously always in favour of more people reading more books, I don’t like these articles, and nor do I like the idea that reading is good for you.
These articles say that reading books (and it’s usually not just any books, it’s proper old-fashioned literary fiction, not those trashy thrillers and romances oh no) makes you a better person. But how many people have ever read one of these articles, thought, ‘Oh, in that case, I’d better go read some more books?’ and then immediately got stuck in to The Brothers Karamazov?
I don’t know, although I’m going to take a little bet that the number of such people is not substantially greater than zero. Because those articles aren’t aimed at, or read by, people who don’t read books. They are instead read by people who already read lots of books, and are probably already at least a little bit smug about it, who then think ‘Oh, if reading books makes you a better person, I must be an even betterer person than I previously thought!’ The whole thing smells of snobbery and smug self-congratulation.
Plus, even without the snobbery factor, talking about how books are good for you (especially, lbh, GCSE Eng-Lit type books) makes them sound like the boring stuff you don’t wanna do. Eat your vegetables! Drink some water! Read your Dickens! Do some exercise!
If you really want to get more people reading, I can’t help feeling that, instead of marketing books as the intellectual equivalent of steamed broccoli and 5-mile-runs, you should try pitching the illicit-pleasure angle (and not just for *that* type of books).
So, let’s bring back the moral panic of the 18th and 19th century: books are bad for you. They encourage you to sit indoors by yourself, isolated from family and friends and fresh air. They cause you to neglect your real-world duties. Many books contain dangerous ideas, and still more of them contain descriptions of disgusting depravities! Worst of all, they draw you in with their seductive tales of adventure and excitement, playing on your emotions and making you care about the fate of fictional characters as much as, or even more than, your actual life. They are, in short, a menace to public health and decency, and should be avoided at all costs.
ruthdehaas 