There are too many books I 'should' be reading

Writing myself a permission slip to stop.

"You do not need a permission slip from the principal's office to live a creative life," Elizabeth Gilbert writes in her book on creativity, Big Magic, which I reread annually and then talk about (usually while emphasising that it is not Eat Pray Love, her other biggie, better on pasta than passion). It’s a gorgeous book, the sort that goes in the ‘creative boost’ pile for when you’re feeling a bit blah, or uncertain, which are symptoms of being human rather than of being uncreative/useless/worthless/shit/whatever flavour of self-loathing is your go-to. This detail is one I think about a lot, because one of the freeing (much-anticipated in childhood, and then sometimes paralyzingly-terrifying when it actually happens) things about adulthood is that you do not need permission slips from your teacher or principal to do certain things. None of us is entirely unencumbered by responsibilities or obligations or unavoidable things, obviously, but there are parts of our life where we can choose.

And yet. Decision fatigue often kicks in – you have encountered that term in articles about why the tech bros wear the same outfit every day and how this is a productivity hack, I’m sure – and we default to what it feels like we ‘should’ do. ‘Should’ is one of those words that probably should (dammit) be excised from our vocabulary, or at least reduced; mostly it means things we feel obliged to do, for various reasons, rather than actual life-or-death matters. (Even when things are undeniably Good For Us, like eating vegetables, it is perhaps more helpful to think about our agency in this – we choose to eat healthily! We choose to go to something social even if it doesn’t quite suit because it will support a friendship! We choose to do the tiresome administrative task so that we can avoid the penalties for not doing it!)

‘Should’ is not just about health or legality, the tangible realities of life, though. It creeps in everywhere. If you are doing anything creative, it is something you have to fight off all the time. For a start, I should be more practical is loud and has a strong body of evidence behind it (bank managers in particular will approve). But then there’s also I should be more commercial or I should be more productive or I should be creating this kind of thing or I should focus on this new project or I should be doing this more like this other person. All those dancing ‘should’s can-canning their way into your brain, sending you into an anxiety spiral of I am doing it all wrong I am failing I am a total fuckup.

I have some skill in talking down those ‘should’s because they are not special and unique to me, or anyone; they’re worries that so many writers (and I suspect other creatives, but writers are the humans I work with) have, and almost always they are worries that creep in as a distraction from actually doing the work. The knots we can tie ourselves into when we’re avoiding doing the work, making the thing, writing the words – we’d earn one of those Scouts merit badges for those skills.

But oh, I am not immune to the ‘should’s. The creative ones, and the life ones, but also – and maybe stupidly – the reading ones. I should really read…

I should read more. I should read better (more high-brow literature). I should read better (more attentively, more thoughtfully, more note-making-ly). I should read this new book that is out by someone I vaguely know or saw something about on Instagram or because it is a new Irish writer and aren’t we all part of a literary community. I should read this book other people have said is excellent, and they are fancy people so it must be true, and that overrules personal taste, doesn’t it? I should read this book before I watch the eight-part miniseries based on it (and I should definitely prefer the book to the TV adaptation).

Do you know how many books are out there that one ‘should’ read? Do you know how short a lifetime is?

Not quite the point of my post here, but there is something to be said for this approach.

Back in January I read several books for ‘should’ reasons – made-up ‘should’s, I mean, because there are some legit ‘should’s in my reading (non-negotiables, like anything I am reading for assessment/feedback purposes, as well as ‘actually it’d be a good idea to read this for Project X’ material) – and it was not a sane way to spend any bit of a month that is already far too long and far too laden with ‘should’s, a month of men grimly ordering Guinness Zeros and women loathing themselves for not meeting every ambitious resolution within the first week of the new year. Why would I do this to myself? Who am I trying to impress? What punishment am I trying to avoid?

What exactly do I think will happen if I read all the ‘should’ books – that I will be a better human being? (Maybe, a little bit. I do believe in the power of books in nudging us towards being kinder, more empathetic.) Do I think that suffering through books is virtuous and will lead to some eventual reward because after years of the Irish education system the Christianity can’t help but seep in? (Probably. And some books are more challenging than others; I’m not advocating for never being pushed in my reading.) Do I imagine that there might come a time when I feel like, now, finally, I am a more acceptable human and therefore worthy of those basic things like kindness and love and… (Oh, dear. Yes.)

Do I trust enough in myself to be a little more critical and selective about the ‘should’s? No, I realised. No. That’s the problem. Everything was starting to feel like a ‘should’ – including buzz about ‘upcoming new releases’, which is advertising. I know not to trust ads when they’re on the TV, to not run out and buy every single product that pops up, but books? Surely buying (or aspiring to buy, or requesting from the library) all the books is… just being a reader! A good literary citizen! A supporter of the arts!

(These are good things to do. But you cannot do it for all the books. Logically I am aware of this. And yet.)

So I am writing myself a permission slip, to ease up on the ‘should’s. It doesn’t mean I am only going to read books that are ‘easy’, or predictable, or familiar, even though this is what reading is for many people; when you work in the field of literature, reading is both leisure activity and professional development (sometimes the difference between the two is incredibly sharp, but often it’s not). Reading a lot, reading widely, reading things that are a stretch – it’s part of the gig. There are other areas I can be only vaguely-informed about (there are plenty). We’re all limited.

And it doesn’t mean there isn’t a little voice in my head reminding me that there are several classics I was probably supposed to finish for a literature module twenty years ago and still haven’t got around to (this little voice is excellent at forgetting all the classics I did finish), or that I am not susceptible to hype about upcoming titles that makes me forget I am being marketed to instead of experiencing a personalised recommendation.

And it doesn’t mean that things like the literary canon and book reviews and ‘books you should read’ and ‘what everyone’s reading!’ and recommendations from both strangers and friends don’t matter, or can’t inform the decisions we make; we’re not in a vacuum and insisting that we’re completely independent of all other human beings is delusional.

But our lifetimes are short, and there are a lot of books out there, and it is impossible to read everything. And if reading matters to us, and it does to me, then outsourcing the choice of what we read, even in that exhausted, accidental, best-of-intentions way, feels like outsourcing our thinking, and there is enough of that in the world already.