what is even the point??
a few thoughts on reading & transience & the infinite multitudes
Dear friend—
The other day I did a thing that I have been trying not to do where I go to the library and take out several books that I know I will likely not read in the prescribed amount of time that the library has entrusted me with them. Luckily, my local library system has done something very cash money of them and gotten rid of fines.
There’s tons of research on why this is a good thing, mostly having to do with making the library a more equitable and welcoming place for low-income folks. That research shows fines make little difference in encouraging people to return their books on time.
There are people who turn in their books on time no matter what. There are people who mean to turn their books in on time but life circumstances delay them a day or four, and fines are overkill (especially for low-income folks for whom a few dollars can mean a lot). And then there are people who may never return their books on time, and a fine won’t do much to dissuade them.
My friend, as a former (short-time) library worker, I am a little ashamed to say that I’m in the latter camp. I hold onto books way too long. I am convinced that I will read them, at some point, but that some point continues to extend further and further into the future.
Luckily, the books at my local library auto-renew.
But just looking at this pile of books, barely begun and spines uncracked, kind of got me stressed. Lately, I’m thinking a lot about the sheer incomprehensible amount of media and art and information floating around the world and the limited time with which I have to read it.
Since I’ve started writing this newsletter on Substack, in a fit of something like community-building, I have subscribed to several newsletters, perhaps dozens, in efforts to participate in this community I have entered. But my friend, to be honest, it is very overwhelming.
The app that I use to bookmark all the things I want to read on the internet is overflowing. I am worried that for the things I do read, I am not giving them the full space and consideration to engage with the work meaningfully. How can I expect others to engage with my work meaningfully if I don’t extend the same courtesy?
And the problem is compounded by the digital environment on which this work lives. It only takes about 10 minutes of reading on a screen before my eyes start glazing over and I start skimming.
They call it skimming for good reason—by the time I have reached the end of the article, I feel as though I have just skittered across the surface of some pool of knowledge, like the skimmer I wielded as a kid every summer, patrolling the edge of my grandparents’ pool for water beetles and the occasional bee. It’s not a cute feeling.
I also recently read an article titled “Why Books Don’t Work” (Andy Matuschak). Matuschak confronts the problem that most Reading Folk™ seem to face—that even after reading some 600 pages of published material on a topic, they can usually only pull 4 or 5 topline ideas from all that reading.
That is, Matuschak says, because books aren’t actually good at helping us learn things unless we engage with them—writing, responding, conversing, playing with the ideas. All good #hottips. I find I don’t really know what I think of a text until I write about it or chat about it with someone else. And that experience helps me remember the piece all the better.
But the whole thing made me think: what is the point of reading these long, well-developed books then? What is the point? What do those 600 pages mean if all the notes that I take and all the ideas I internalize and all the Thoughts I have only sum to a 2-3 page doc on my computer?
And I’m slowly coming to terms with the possibility that this view is rather uncharitable to the way our brains work and the way the world works—in that there is not room for everything, and nothing lasts forever.
This is as it has been, forever and ever amen. There are always pieces of knowledge that escape, books lost to fires and to rain, ideas that were powerful for a decade only to fade into obscurity in the next.
This desire that I struggle with, to capture everything, to etch as much experience as I can into the stone of my brain, is unrealistic. My brain is not made of stone.
And perhaps approaching media in this way draws away from the sheer joy of learning something new, of reading a sentence that thrills me, of being taken on a journey for a few hours that is, in that moment, sublime.
Maybe we (I) aren’t on this earth to drink up every piece of knowledge and message that we (I) possibly can. Maybe we are (I am) just supposed to be able to appreciate things, learn from them as much as we will, and then let them go.
Still gonna be writing my book notes though lol
Thanks for reading, chat soon,
—mia xx