Ray Bradbury's 1953 novel Fahrenheit 451 depicts a future where books are outlawed and firefighters have to burn any books they find. In a 2007 interview with LA Weekly, Bradbury said that his novel is widely misunderstood. It's not about government censorship (as many believe it is) but about his fear that television would kill books.
And what do you know? It's 2021 and everyone is reading fewer books. We're not burning books, but we're gradually forgetting about them. Instead, we watch Netflix and YouTube, play games, scroll social media feeds, and read news articles that come and go faster than a dayfly.
While none of these activities are inherently wrong (and I indulge in quite a few of them) they should never entirely replace reading books. The benefits of reading books are simply too big and too many to discard them:
- They make you more empathetic.
- They build your vocabulary.
- They help you sleep.
- They inspire.
Books are often the best introduction to a topic and the best way to dive deep into a topic. They bring something new and fresh into your world, and they do so with the elegance and nuance that we desperately need in this fast-paced, click-driven world.
The trick to building a sustainable reading habit is to make it easy for yourself. While I love a good paperback, I own a Kindle that I carry with me wherever I go. I also have the Kindle app on my phone and sometimes use the Kindle web app for reading on my laptop. My books are always close by.
Additionally, I never have to search long for what I want to read next, because I have a list of 400+ books I want to read tagged on Goodreads. If you want to kick-start your reading list, feel free to take some of my books or browse the 50 book recommendations from X-Teamers across a wide range of categories.
Much of reading more comes down to simply doing it. Don't agonize about the perfect strategy or the most efficient way or the best time to read a book. You'll figure that out as you go along. Don't allow modern distractions to flood your information intake. Read books instead.
