Non-necessary reading
This year, I have decided to make space for more non-urgent reading. This is reading that isn’t about keeping up with work-related issues or the latest, best writers. It might mean that I will have to lay off a bit on my habit of reading the New York Times Book Review and imagining the necessity of reading everything that is in it.
Although he puts it differently, Chris Smith of the Englewood Review of Books is apparently on the same track. He started the new year by recommending that people turn to the classics in 2013. He defines “classic” in a way similar to my own line of thought: books that are simply “not of the moment.”
The main reason I want to do this is to move out of the mode where all reading is utilitarian. Old books are places where I anticipate pleasures that have nothing to do with keeping up with or being a part of. I want to have one old book by my nightstand and read a little from it every night, as a rabbit hole down which I can disappear in order to have my imagination expanded.
