A New Decade / The Radio Plays the Sounds we Made
I read more books than usual this year, the average quality level was higher and there are two or three that I would press in to your hand right now. It was altogether, the most enjoyable year in reading for a while. What I took from this is a good reminder that beneficial effects are often linked – more and better, faster and together, quality and quantity. This is frustrating when you’re focussed on change, because it’s easier (and more desirable) to be able to isolate single pieces of the system and operate on those, and it’s more pleasant to believe that operating on isolated parts of the system can drive holistic change – more pleasant because that’s clearly easier than the alternative, which is to accept that changing systems requires a look at the multiple interrelated pieces that comprise the whole.
How to read more books
Counter-intuitively though, it can sometimes be straightforward to jumpstart some level of change with a small, meaningful action. In this case, for me, it was just to really focus on reading over the summer, and to shorten the time between buying and reading a book. Over the last few years, I’ve bought books by building an order from end-of-year “best of” lists, and then buying a large number from Amazon, in order to have good choices of books on hand the moment I finish one. The difficulty is that culture goes cold, that is to say, something bought in December can look less interesting in March. Throughout last year, I consciously shortened the distance between buying and reading, which meant I got to Jia Tolentino’s excellent Trick Mirror, Paul Kingsnorth’s Savage Gods and Max Porter’s Lanny quickly. All three are worth your time.
