I'm learning how to read books all over again

Tsundoku, the attention economy, and online culture that makes reading a competition.

It’s not that I failed so spectacularly. I actually read more books in 2024 than I had in the past few years. But by internet standards where reading can sometime feel like a competition, six books is an absolute failure. As I type this, I physically recoil at how depressing that sounds. What does it even say about me when I confess to you that reading has been a struggle and it takes me forever to finish a book?

This isn’t a new year’s resolution because I don’t really believe in making them, but after failing to read as many books as I had intended in 2024, I’m trying again in 2025.

With renewed resolve I walk into two bookstores—one that is new-ish to my neighborhood and one that’s been in business for as long as I’ve been alive. We used to go in and pass the time there on rainy days when the kids were little. Their memory of it is far better than mine because they remember a shop cat that I have no memory of. I’m guessing that was the last time I was there, probably 13 years or more. The community bookstore that survived rising rents, that survived the pandemic, that continues to survive and beat the odds against Amazon and polls that show we read less and less every year. It welcomes me back, even if I don’t deserve it after such a long neglected absence.

Books don’t cast judgment, however. They just want you to read them.

I’m reminded of this as I shimmy my way through the narrow aisles, browsing the carefully curated selection of titles on tables that anchor the center of the store. I take in the visual tactility of it all even before I pick up a single book—the colorful spines, type, and imagery—all of the cacophony of textures coexisting together, each book a little piece of art. My trained designer eye is attracted to the ones that appeal to my sensibilities and I realize like everything in our lives, they’re competing for our attention. But somehow, it accomplishes this quietly, even the covers with bold typefaces and loud colors. It’s still quieter than anything that wants our attention on our screens.

But I’m not here to admire the wall of books, the design choices of art directors, or the curatorial talents of the bookstore staff. I’m here to fall in love again, and I’m here to find answers.

My favorite excuse was that I didn’t have time. It’s one that may be overused, but there’s truth in there. You try raising two kids while working two jobs and ask me why I couldn’t find the time to read. And then, there was all the reading that I felt I needed to do just so I could keep up with my career. An enormous amount of think pieces, trend reports, industry news, and software tutorials just to stay on top of it all. It was always an exhaustingly endless pile of reading material that was never for leisure but rather a security tactic to stay relevant in tech.

So is this why, a lack of time? Well…I quit Instagram, pulled back on my career, and I still didn’t find the time to read more. As I dig deeper, I realize I’m my own proof that people don’t read books anymore because our cognitive habits and attention spans have changed.

Yes, undeniably, yes, this is the main culprit because I actually do read quite a bit. Every single day in fact, but most of my reading is online and in the form of essays, newsletters, and articles. I struggle to maintain enough focus to read anything longer than that. Whether it’s from consumption of short-form everything to cognitive overload from screens, I’ve realized, to my grave disappointment, that even when I’m engrossed in a book, there’s an underlying impatience that gnaws at every page I turn. That impatience pushes me to hurry along so I can get back to the ten other million things on my mind.

It wasn’t always like this. We weren’t always interrupted by constant notifications that beg us to pick up our phones. That red dot on our screens is an attention-seeking nag that hangs over us until we click on it to make it disappear. But it comes back, it always does. Even as I blame my lack of reading on modern life and all of its distractions and addiction to instant gratification, I can’t deny that it’s changed me.

So how do I fix this?

I first had to ask myself why I wanted to be a reader of books again. Online culture can make reading feel like a competitive sport and I wanted to make sure that I wasn’t doing it for reasons that didn’t matter. I know I want to read so that I can be a better writer, but I also want to find that magic again when books alone were the portal to my imagination.

I dig back into my memories of being immersed in a novel so deep, I can’t put it down even as the clock ticks into the late hours. I correlate this same behavior to binge-watching TV, only I’ve replaced one with the other. I don’t have enough self-control to close my browser when I’m riveted by a cliffhanger and before I know it, it’s 2 a.m. I remind myself that a good book is equally worthy of sacrificing sleep.

Reading requires a singular focus and this is where I struggle. Have I ever told you how much I love to multitask? It’s an accomplice to my love of efficiency, but also cloaks my shortened attention span. TV is passive and I can do two other things at once. Reading, on the other hand, demands more of my attention and like a diva, wants all of it. It punishes me when my focus is scattered, but rewards me with wisdom, empathy, and new worlds when I give it my unwavering attention.

All of this requires training my mind to rewire it back the way it used to be. Just as it proved critical for writing, I begin to understand that reading is also a practice that I need to build an endurance for. Fifteen daily minutes turns into twenty, then thirty. A daily habit to make space for the sustained engagement that books require.

From my visit to my neighborhood bookstores, I walk out with a brand new book in my hand. I love the smoothness of the cover and the subtle tooth against my hands as I flip the inside pages. I bring it home and place it on my bookshelf with a stack of books yet to be read. Just the other day, I learned that there’s a word for this. Tsundoku. It roughly translates from Japanese to the art of stockpiling books you will never read.

I pause and make a promise that my books aren’t there to be decorative, so I pull my new book out again. I know that my goal of reading will demand patience—you can’t undo in a single night what took over a decade to evolve. I open to the first page and start reading.

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Links for you this week

To make and eat:

• Roast fennel, clementine, burrata and chilli salad (delicious magazine)
  I wasn’t sure what to expect from this recipe. A warm salad of roasted fennel and clementine, the bitterness of radicchio, the creaminess of burrata. And then a curious sprinkle of chili flakes. The result is delicious and might just be my current favorite salad for winter.

My immediate next reads (disclosure: these are affiliate links to bookshop.org which means I earn a small commission if you make a purchase through the link):

• Human Acts, Han Kang
  Han, who won the Nobel prize in literature last year, tells the story of the government-suppressed Gwangju uprising in South Korea. This is my first entry into her work—I would love to know if you’ve read any of her books.

• Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow, Gabrielle Zevin
  A story about childhood friendship and the world of video game design.

• A Free Life, Ha Jin
  A novel about the immigrant experience centering on a Chinese American family in the aftermath of the massacre at Tiananmen Square.

Other reading recommendations—I love a good reading list!

• NYC libraries reveal their most popular books of 2024 (Gothamist)

• Books of the Year 2024 (Granta)

• What to Read When You Want to be Stirred (The Rumpus)

• All the books I consumed in 2024 -

  Nikki Summer
  read an impressive 50 books last year. I’m in awe.

Articles I found interesting:

• 9 unexpected things we learned about mental health and our brains in 2024 (NPR)
  I learned a few things, namely that my effort in maintaining my gut-health for my chronic ailments may also help my stress levels. There’s also a link to an online tool called the Brain Care Score that gives you a rough assessment of your brain health after a series of questions. Out of a max score of 21, you can see where your score lands. I scored a 16…which is not terrible, I think?

• Tiger-cats, sea squirts and beetles, oh my! Meet some species identified in 2024 (NPR)
  It’s pretty amazing that scientists identify thousands of new species a year. Of the ones profiled here, the Skeleton panda sea squirts found off the coast of Kumejima, a tiny island west of Okinawa, Japan, might be the most intriguing.

• How I Make Habits Stick (Rahul Chowdhury)

  Always curious to read how others tackle this.

• The personal cost of mental illness (Welcome Collection)
  Laura Grace Simpkins reflects on the “mental health income gap” in a beautifully written personal essay.
  “I struggle with sustaining what other people call “a career” because of my mental health. When I’m well, I’m a good employee. No one has wanted to let me go. But when I’m hit by an extreme mood, I find it hard to cope.”