The other week I came across one of those posts about what you should be reading. I’m sure you’ve seen them, too: You shouldn’t read smut. You should read the classics. You shouldn’t read books for young readers if you’re a grownup. You should read books for adults even if you’re a kid. You shouldn’t read escapist books. You should read this one book, for reasons, instead of something you actually want to read. There used to be more about how you shouldn’t read science fiction and fantasy, but the tide has changed somewhat on that front.
I would like to recommend that we mostly do away with the “shoulds” in our reading lives. If you have already succeeded at this, I am genuinely happy for you, and I hope you enjoy your reading freedom! But I’m not there, and I don’t think I’m alone.
I get in should-fits all the time. I should read more of this author or that. I should read more history. I should read more literary fiction/nonfiction about the state of the world/books about music/local authors. I should reread all the SFF books I loved as a younger reader and see if they hold up. I should read more books in translation.
And this, see, this is where I think “should” gets tricky. I absolutely should read more books in translation—because I want to. Should sometimes means “I want to,” not “I feel obliged to” or “It seems like I ought to want to.” But—and this is not just semantics, I don’t think—it feels different. “Should” is bossy. It thinks it knows best. It is “used in auxiliary function to express obligation, propriety, or expediency,” according to good old Merriam-Webster.
“Should” makes me grumpy. It makes me look at books I definitely otherwise want to read and suddenly feel resistant. It makes me think I don’t want to read things. I get this cranky kneejerk response to being told I should read things, even though, like every other enthusiastic book recommender on the planet, I have absolutely gushed, “Holy CATS you should TOTALLY read this book!” more than once in my life. More than many times.
“Should” and “want to” are related but not the same, and I think there’s value in making that differentiation—in taking the should and the shouldn’t out of how we think about what we read. A post made the rounds recently in which children’s books were treated as either “nutritious” or, well, junk food. Kids had to read their vegetables to get dessert.
Kids shouldn’t be taught to treat reading like a chore, and we shouldn’t treat it like that, either. (Sometimes a “should” is unavoidable.)
And most of us, here, reading about books, don’t do that. But in times when reading becomes hard, or it’s difficult to focus, or the world feels like one massive existential crisis after another—in times like these, I mean—the shoulds creep up, at least for me. I should be reading more! I should be reading better books! I am making terrible choices with my limited time on earth! I shouldn’t have read 100 pages of that book I ultimately did not finish! I should read that book that’s been on my shelf for 20 years unread!
I think probably we should all be reading whatever the hell we want.
For me, right now, reading feels like 2020 all over again: Difficult, slow, and particular. I gave myself permission to read anything at all, this year, provided I already have the book. (I should buy fewer books—see, there go the shoulds again.) (I should also buy all the books I love and support all those authors!) (I should support local bookstores!) (You see how this goes.)
It all started out so well. I chose at random, without any sense of obligation, and they were all winners: Opacities! The first Mossa and Pleiti book! Doppelganger! Human Acts! A book about the form of essays! And then it went downhill. A book I had absolutely wanted to read when I got it, but then hated when I started to read it—and yet I finished it, desperate to understand what it was that had drawn me to the book in the first place. A recent middle-grade blockbuster that was so close to great except for the glaringly manipulative death in the middle. A book I was genuinely enjoying until William Burroughs appeared as a character.
None of these were bad books; they just weren’t the books for me. And so the shoulds crept up, looked over my shoulder, and whispered, “You should be reading something else.” And I groaned, and tried not to listen. I finally picked up Suki Kim’s Without You, There Is No Us, about teaching in North Korea, and was rapt for days. I’m not sure I picked the next right book after that. But I’m reading.
Take out the shoulds. Take out the ought-to and need-to (unless you have school or deadlines, in which case, hop to it!). Take out the obligations and the sense of missing out—but embrace the fact that you’re never going to be able to read all the books. If your taste is weird right now, accept it. I seem only to want to read narrative nonfiction about people in unusual and difficult situations. I can’t imagine why that is.
Read the weird books. Read the old books. Read the books you’ve always meant to read and thought you’ll get around to someday. Get offline sometimes. Do what needs doing, and then take a break, and read whatever the hell you want. And don’t let anyone tell you that you should be reading something else.
