A Critique of my Own Kin

I am not on the hunt for my new favorite book.

I am currently reading three books (as is my usual routine–one for each room, each mood, time of day, etc.). And it is true that at this point in time, none of these three books are on track to become my new favorite book or the best book I’ve read this year, or ever for that matter. Fortunately, they are all three very good books that are well-thought out, well-written, and interesting.

But I did not pick these three books in the hopes that one of them would be my next favorite. The fact of the matter is the reason I read has nothing to do with ratings or comments about how you just have to read this book I recently finished. The angst in me is usually turned off by comments like that in the first place. When I scroll my feed and see people recommend a book that is part of the top ten classics they’ve ever read, I sometimes feel less inclined to read that book. Perhaps there is a word to call me for this line of thinking, but hold out ’till the end, would ya?

Now I understand that to build an audience, there is a certain level of captivity that you have to build, but when videos or comments like that pop up, I find myself feeling betrayed by that captivity. Betrayed because we have somehow taken a medium I find sacred and used it for commodification and consumption. Throwing beauty to the wolves to rip to shreds and shit out, improperly digested.

But don’t get me wrong. I am part of this crowd as well. I irregularly post pictures of my books on my somewhat-secret-second-account because I do want to build community around this love that I have. But I want to do it in a way that doesn’t feel so much like selling out but feels more like sharing. Even here on this lightly traveled internet blog, I hesitate to even give ratings to the books I read. My GoodReads account is rife with unrated and unreviewed books not because I have nothing to say, but because how could I say it?

We tend to jump to extremes to captivate an audience. Words like “favorite,” “best,” and “worst” do wonders to the person reading that review because they are strong and forceful. But frankly, not all books demand forceful language and not every situation calls for it having been the best or worst.

One current read, The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco is good and may be deserving of words like clever and borderline genius at times. But at no point during this read have I felt like I could confidently say anything to the ranking of where it fits between the best and worst book I have ever read. And I know that this will not change when I finish it or even three months from now when it has all but wandered away from my immediate memory. I know this because I cannot do this with any of the books I’ve read. I do have a favorite book, but beyond this singular and unique exception, I have not been able to identify a “Top Three” read in…ages.

And frankly, that is part of the reason why I hesitate calling this space a “book blog.” Because really it is just a collection of feelings I have while reading that are adjacent to the books on my shelves. Is this for a lack of trying? I don’t think so. More likely, I think that my inability to do what a book blog would require me to do is due to my thoughts that it’s all much more complicated than just this being a good or bad book.

Rather, it is much more important to me to analyze the entire corpus in context; i.e., who is the author, when was he alive and what was going on, what else did he write? Why did he do this in the first place? The matter of where this falls on a scale from worst to best seems incidental and flippant.

Before feeling even the slightest comfort talking about an author, I generally like to read at least 3 works by the same person. That is usually accompanied by pages of journaling and notes, research into his life and history, and research into the broader time period as a whole. And that still does not feel like enough. (Would it be enough even if I sat down and interviewed him?) But more so, at no point during this process do I feel like I am getting closer to my next favorite read.

Being on the hunt for the next best thing helps take away the beauty that is in the present. Should I enter every new experience thinking that it would be my next favorite thing, every experience would thus be disappointing. Holding excitement and energy for these things is important but actively seeking out a new favorite is doing that thing and yourself a disservice. That’s not to say that things are meant to be mediocre or average, just that there is so much value going neutrally into something. If you’ve identified this experience as a potential new favorite before it even happens, you have lost out on the complexities of what it is and what it is intended for.

This is part of a much larger social critique that seems to come up more often now. That being how we tend to try and get past something rather than experience going through it. I enjoy going through my books, but it no way do I want to necessarily get past them. This idea of maximizing our consumption and getting past is taking away our ability to think critically. Thus, what is left are buzz words like “worst” and “favorite” because we cannot actually identify anything about it. Essentially, we sprint to the finish line for the sake of saying we finished and without any true declaration of thought, we categorize works quickly and move on. Improperly digested.

So, what’s the remedy?

We can’t be on the hunt for our next favorite book.

I am not arguing that you go out and read a shitty book or even going out and getting a book in a genre that you do not generally read (though I will advocate for that, just not right now). I will, however, argue that taking your time to explore something fully and developing a complete context around it is much more beneficial. Recently, I have seen this being called “slow-maxing.”

You can call it whatever you want, but I just prefer the term “digested.” You chew your food, you should chew on this.