Why Am I Reading This Stuff?

After my recent post on bookshelves, I was sitting at my desk and staring absently at the bookshelves holding probably 85% of the books in the house (adult division). Because I am of a certain age, I have a LOT of physical books and, outside of reference textbooks, I have read every single one of them. On top of these, there are another 30 or so that are e-book only. As I scanned over them though, I started to wonder: why am I reading a lot of these books? *

A brief pause: I had started writing the above paragraph a few weeks ago but never really finished enough to even make it worth posting here, in "Unfinished Thoughts." But then I read this article in The Atlantic:

Reading Is a Vice

The article itself is about how reading habits have declined precipitously and what people have been doing to reverse or at least halt the trend. And it touches on something important: which is that reading for pleasure is not - and has never really ever been - about self-improvement, being a good citizen, or whatever else some stodgy lit professor might try to convince you of. It is instead something people do for fun and the truth is that the activity itself is antisocial. It's worth quoting a bit here:

"Being a reader means cultivating a relationship with the world that, by most standards, can seem pointless and counterproductive. Reading is not profitable; it doesn’t teach you any transferable skills or offer any networking opportunities. On the contrary, it is an antisocial activity in the most concrete sense: To do it you have to be alone, or else pretend you’re alone by tuning out other people. Reading teaches you to be more interested in what’s going on inside your head than in the real world."

That certainly makes sense for fiction books and definitely for the genre page-turners like spy and romance novels. But it doesn't track quite as straight-forwardly for non-fiction. In my real life I am not a history podcaster or an author. I don't know anyone that wants to discuss the history of nuclear weapons development or strategy, even fewer who care about the post-WW2/Cold War era history and the global order now being swept aside. But somehow, I have probably read 25-30 books between those two subjects alone. Why? I don't really know. Maybe because I grew up near to where some of the early nuclear development took place. But really, it's hard to say. I don't think I've read an actual book related to my current occupation... maybe ever? Though fair to say, it would be difficult to imagine any such hypothetical book being a very gripping read. 

So... still an unsatisfactory conclusion to this ramble. Why does anyone read numerous works in one particular subject so completely without utility to their occupation? 

 

* This was going to be a short footnote on AI/LLM estimates of the author of this blog (i.e. me.), but I decided to hold that for another post. Maybe.

 

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