“Cristi…Who wrote Iliad and Odyssey?” — My reading journey
“Herodotus” I answer overly confident. “No Cristi, Homer… Homer did”. This short excerpt was from a conversation I was having with someone in my 1st year while I was trying to prove that I am a really cultured person, even in the realms of books and literature, while supporting that reading is useless. This was the tip of the iceberg that caused a radical change in my life, but we’ll come to that later. One of the primary reasons behind my dismissive attitude towards reading stemmed from my intrinsic impatient nature. I consistently lacked the patience necessary to sit down with a book, perpetually arguing that I could acquire the same information more efficiently through a quick internet search or a YouTube video.
In this blog, I want to tell my story about my relationship with books and reading. To keep things rather simple and structured I will build this post on the following questions:
- What was my attitude towards books in the past?
- When did I start to be aware of my negative bias?
- What was the critical point that caused the change?
- Where am I right now ?
Looking back, I can confidently say that reading would be one of the habits I would’ve wished to build a bit earlier and maybe by the end of this post I can convince some people to avoid doing this “mistake”.
What was my attitude towards books in the past?
Since I was a kid and started learning how to read, I remember that I never liked this activity. Looking back I think there were 3 main reasons why I was never attracted to books:
- My lack of patience (trait I have mentioned in the beginning as well)
- Similar activities that were more entertaining (i.e: watching TV, playing on the computer)
- Finding the information useless / preferring quicker alternatives (this started to be a reason as I entered high school and was fuelled by the mandatory lectures we had)
I was a really active kid, I always needed to do something, move around and I could never stay quite somewhere. This energy contributed to a rather short attention span and I was always getting bored pretty quickly by most activities. I don’t think it’s hard to imagine why books never seemed interesting to me.
My mom and dad always tried to convince me to give books a chance saying that I will get invested in the action, and it’s a healthy way through which I can relax, let my mind wonder and develop my imagination. They have tried making me read books such as Harry Potter and The Adventure of Tom Sawyer but it didn’t work. Despite my parents’ best efforts, I always gravitated towards the instant gratification of watching TV or gaming on the PC. These options seemed more captivating for me.
As time passed and I grew older, I kept my bias towards TV and the computer but the mandatory lectures from school made me dislike books even more. I never understood and appreciated classic stories from the Romanian literature and always considered them irrelevant. Even when presented the idea to read books that would cover my interests I would always argue that I can find the information quicker on a 5 minutes Youtube video, so I was again falling for the quicker and more addictive solution.
When did I start to be aware of my negative bias?
The first moments I started being aware of this negative bias against lecture was during my debating years. The topics we used to debate were quite complex: philosophy, economy, politics… Looking back I don’t understand how I was managing to do a decent job in my matches with the little amount of information I had. More shocking for my present self is how confident I was talking about complex topics as “This house believes the United States of America should pivot toward Eastern Asia”.
I was doing fine in the beginning just from the simple fact that I was speaking quite nicely and had a good structure but I was simply obliterated by students that were actually reading on the topics and had a much broader knowledge then simply information found in 5 minutes Youtube videos. Someone who read “Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind” by Yuval Noah Harari for example, could have easily explain some social concepts (i.e: why do we need laws and some sort of order in our society) in a way more advanced and beautiful way than I could’ve with watching something online.
The hungrier I got for knowledge, knowledge of any kind to be honest, I started to face the issue that I didn’t like to read. Maybe reading heavy books as Sapiens would’ve not been necessarily the best thing, as I simply would’ve not had the maturity to grasp some concepts, but simpler books as Atomic Habits by James Clear would’ve for sure taught me some fundamental ideas that would’ve helped me on my journey.
What was the critical point that caused the change?
The climax happened when I had the conversation mentioned in the beginning. And as much as I would like to deny it, that conversation happened quite late, in my first year of university. I’m not saying that knowing who wrote Iliad and Odyssey is an essential knowledge that everybody should know, but considering how confident and even arrogant I was on my stance against books, it was a rather hard hit for me. In that moment I was so naive to think that I already know all essential knowledge I might ever need, and books are places where you can find only overspecialised information, that in an argument would never make a difference. But that conversation, hit exactly where it needed to hit. Especially that came from a person that I would’ve never wanted to admit that I was wrong in this aspect.
Where am I right now ?
From that moment, I started slowly. I began to pick up books that were covering my interests and day by day I would try to go through 1 or 2 pages. I started with self-development and finance books, it was the first topic that caught my eyes and thought would be helpful in my day to day life. I tried to change my mentality from being confident that I already know everything, to being humble and always wanting to discover more . Curiosity is the perfect word to describe the mindset I tried to achieve. After a while, I started slowly to switch from only “serious”/”scientific” books to some “classics” such as 1984 by George Orwell, The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho. In the beginning I needed books that would give me the information that I wanted straight away, but I slowly started enjoying going through fiction books trying to figure out the meaning and essence of the book myself. Even fiction can teach you meaningful things, something that I never believed I would ever say.
It’s never too late to start picking up reading as a habit, and seeing my journey, I believe everyone should try, at least to some degree, to build a good relationship with books. I am nowhere near where I would like to be with my lecture list, time being my biggest enemy. I’m really grateful for my journey so far, and I realised that in the beginning I didn’t even know how to read (in terms of storing information such that it doesn’t get lost). Most likely I will share as well my journey on that topic as I definitely would’ve wish to have the strategy I’m using now in the beginning.
At the beginning of this year I wanted to achieve the goal of 12 books in 12 months. For some of the people reading this post, it might sound like an easy thing however, this was a big challenge for me. We are in the 10th month of the year, but I am not wrapping up my 10th book. I recently finished my 7th one. However, even this for me is a big victory, and I am still pushing towards the end of the year.
PS: I would actually love to hear if you have any book recommendation :)! Feel free to write in the comments anything that you think a 20 years old should read!
