I'd Rather Be Reading: The Delights and Dilemmas of the Reading Life

by Anne Bogel

But sometimes it’s more apt to say the book seeks me. I’ve learned books move in mysterious ways, and I’d do well to pay attention.

You shouldn’t tell a friend how to live her life, unless she asks—and even if she does, proceed with caution. This I knew. But I didn’t perceive that giving books is no different. You shouldn’t tell another grown-up what to read, or when, or how.

You have more books than shoes. You have more books than bookshelves. You do some quick math and realize how much money is tied up in your book collection. You suspect your books equal the gross domestic product of a small nation.

I’ve been many kinds of readers over the years, and I remember them fondly. (Sometimes I think I can imagine the readers I might yet be.) I’m the sum of all these bookish memories.

For readers, the great thing about getting older is that you don’t lose all the other readers you’ve been. Sometimes you think fondly of the readers you used to be; sometimes looking back makes you cringe a little. But they’re still here. They’re still you.

Bookish enthusiasm is contagious, but it isn’t sufficient—not if I want to find the books that are truly right for me, and for you to find the ones right for you. It’s easy enough for me to say, “I liked that book,” or “I didn’t,” but I often struggle to explain why.

Thousands of years ago, the Greek philosopher Heraclitus wrote, “No man ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and he’s not the same man.”

When we revisit a book we’ve read before, we see how life has woken us up to understand passages that previously went over our heads. The book itself highlights the gap between who I am and who I used to be.