I have often struggled with book guilt. Do you know the feeling? It’s the pang you get when someone asks “Have you read _______?” and you really feel that you ought to have read it but you haven’t. Maybe not. Maybe it’s just me. As a recovering English teacher I spent years feeling guilty for the sheer number of books I hadn’t read. But, of course, this is ridiculous. It is like feeling guilty for the sheer number of humans on the planet with whom you are not friends.
You see, I have come to think of books as friends. And the books that we surround ourselves with as our community. The truth is there are plenty of people you could surround yourselves with. But, the older you get, the more you realize how little time you have and the more you have to be incredibly intentional about creating your community. And this is from someone who’s admittedly terrible at finding and building friendships (chronic introvert here).
In the same way, while there are many books I somehow feel that I “should” read and “should” love, the older I get, the more I feel that I want to carefully curate my community of books. After all, books don’t just convey information (at least the great ones). Books shape us and challenge us and support us. We need to choose our book-community carefully. And, just like our human community, there is plenty of room for diversity. It’s great to have the friend who is just plain fun, the friend who goes to see dumb movies with you and laughs at your jokes, the friend who spontaneous and maybe even silly. It’s also good to have the friend who listens, who empathizes, who understands your hardships. And it’s good to have a friend who challenges you beyond your comfort zone, who calls you out when you’re wrong, and sometimes makes you uncomfortable with his truth-telling. Your book friends can fall in all of those categories and more.
But, here’s the thing, you don’t have to feel bad about what you read (I mean, there are some books that may be exceptions to this rule, but I won’t name names). Read widely, read deeply. But you may never finish Ulysses (I gave up) or Don Quixote, and that’s ok. You may not like Charles Dickens or Margaret Atwood. No problem. Build your community of books and make them rich and worth investing in. Like your human community, they will change your life.
“Good books, like good friends, are few and chosen; the more select, the more enjoyable”
Louisa May Alcott