Although I’ve talked before about how forcing yourself to read novels, or turning it into a “productivity” thing (with daily targets, rules etc…), is a really bad thing to do – I thought that I’d talk about it again. Because it turns something relaxing and magical into a despised chore.
I ended up thinking about this topic on a sleep-deprived morning in mid-May, when I was still getting over an annoying cold. I realised that I’m still only about 54 pages into the sci-fi novel I’ve been reading for the past few days.
It’s a really good novel – “Record Of A Spaceborn Few” (2018) by Becky Chambers – which, like the previous two books in Chambers’ “Wayfarers” series, is a (mostly) stand-alone novel that is more about characters, world-building and atmosphere than about futuristic technology. Like the other novels in the series, it’s less about the characters going on an epic quest to save the galaxy and it’s more of a small-scale story. But what a story! The world feels rich, the characters feel realistic, the story evokes lots of emotions etc… It is a really good book. And it isn’t even that long or that slow-paced by sci-fi novel standards.
[Edit: Alas, about a hundred pages in, I realised that this novel would be a “DNF” for me. And I moved on to reading another novel. I’ll explain more in the partial review I hope to post in the future but, at the moment, I only seem to be interested in more plot-focused novels….]
Yet, I’m only 54 pages into it after several days and I caught myself judging myself about this. Yes, I’d been stressed out during the past few days, I hadn’t been sleeping well, I’d also been recovering from a cold and distracted by an amazing indie horror game called “Crow Country” (2024) as well. In that context, 54 pages is an achievement!
On a larger scale, I’ve also been trying to avoid “binge-reading” or “productivity” reading ever since I got back into novels in January because doing this in 2018-20 left me totally burnt-out on the entire medium of literature for about four or five years.
And part of my mind was going “Oh, the problem is that you’re reading a sci-fi novel! Go on, read another fast-paced and action-packed Lee Child thriller novel instead! That’ll make you read more!“. And, yes, there is something to be said for jump-starting your reading with something like that.
Still, I noticed that there was an undercurrent of “forcing myself to read” to this thought. And, again, treating reading as a “productivity” thing, or forcing yourself to read, just turns something magical into an exhausting routine chore which – after maybe a year or two – you’ll just lose interest in. For literal years.
This isn’t the first time I’ve said this, and I’m probably not the first person to ever say this, but “productivity” reading is a very modern trend. It emerged because of social media. Because of people showing off how many books they’ve read to strangers on the other side of the world, trendy “BookTok” novels etc… Because, with the English-language internet mostly consisting of US culture, the joyless “Protestant work ethic” ends up getting applied to everything, even things which are supposed to be fun.
Because, yes, novels are meant to be fun. And they, often, aren’t even meant to be binge-read either. That’s why they have chapters. That’s why it’s a medium where, like a 1990s computer game, you can “save your progress” (with a bookmark) at literally any time. Unlike a film, which demands 90-180 minutes from you in one sitting, novels are much more chill and are more like “Read as much as you want to, as fast as you want to“.
Even if you go back twenty or thirty years, the idea of being “productive” with reading novels would seem as silly as speed-eating gourmet food, listening to music on fast-forward, cramming an entire holiday into just one day etc… No, in the 1990s and 2000s, a novel was a thing that you actually relaxed with.
You didn’t set yourself daily deadlines or take notes or anything like that. A paperback novel was just a thing that was a companion to you over several days or weeks, that you read whenever you had the time or inclination to do so. It was a common and popular entertainment medium – not an “improving” productivity thing. If a novel was particularly gripping and you had the time, you might blaze through the whole thing in a day or three – but this was the exception rather than the rule.
The instances of it I remember from the 2000s – binge-reading Frank Herbert’s “Dune” (1965) in two days when I was seventeen, reading Agatha Christie’s “And Then There Were None” (1939) in a single day when I was twenty etc…. – are memorable to me because of how uncommon they were!
Like a portable videogame console, novels were usually just a fun thing that could easily be carried around and enjoyed whenever you had the time or inclination to do so.
Again, novels are meant to be fun.
So, don’t force yourself to read them! Just find one that actually looks interesting to you and read it at your own speed. Even if it’s just a couple of chapters every week or whatever. The point is to have fun.
“Slow” reading, taking days or weeks to read a novel, was literally the norm as little as twenty years ago. It’s how generation upon generation of readers have enjoyed novels. It is the normal way to enjoy novels. The whole modern “I’ve got to read 25% of this novel today to stay on target!” thing is very much a weird modern invention, and not one that will probably last for very long. Because it takes the fun out of reading novels. And what is the point of reading if it isn’t fun?
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Anyway, I hope that this was interesting 🙂
