I’ve seen some posts in the last few weeks or months where people muse about the costs of reading vs. writing. Earlier today, Bentham’s Bulldog wrote a post about it, so I’ll post mine.
This post was spontaneous, on account that I’m trying to write more spontaneously, I am having trouble writing recently, and I also had a comment yesterday about the viability of shorter posts vs posting notes. Originally this post was going to be a note, but I decided it was a bit long and could work as a post.
Anyway, for about 5-8 years after college, I read between 40 and 65 books every year. I counted them on good reads once and I easily cleared 300 books, maybe even closer to 400 if you count the books I read but didn’t want to disclose on Goodreads, or books that I started and DNFed.
I think I have a good sense of what a healthy amount of reading is, given I’ve read so much, but I’m not an academic.
The best time to read a lot of books is probably your early 20s. You have lots of time on your hands, have no need to pretend you’re an expert on anything, and everyone is addicted to screens. It’s a good time to learn and it differentiates you from others.
After a few hundred books, you will get bored of reading unless you love the activity in and of itself. If you’re an instrumental non-fiction reader, you will get bored in time of reading. If you’re a fiction reader, the fun is endless. I got into fiction for a while, but I don’t love it as much as I used to love reading non-fiction. I prefer non-reading media entertainment for low-stakes fun.
People who say they have read hundreds/thousands of books on one subject are probably lying (Norm Finklestein, Jordan Peterson). Unless you are a certified speed reader, most people are going to struggle to read more than 60-80 books a year and live balanced, healthy productive lives. If you’re pushing your 50s and have read 60 books a year for 30 years, that’s 1800 books. That’s a lot! But I’m skeptical of any intellectual who brags about that reading count because there’s trade-off between reading a lot and writing a lot (see #4). What’s more, when it comes to reading books, if you’ve ever read a lot in a single subject, you know it’s hard to read a few dozen in a subject. More specifically. If you’ve read enough books on a narrow subject, it gets hard after 5-10 books to find books that don’t use the same information you’ve already read. You have to actually mine for something novel, and it’s usually not worth the time/energy. I’ve read a lot of books on philosophy, politics, psychology, religion, and economics, among others, and I’m just not interested in reading about these subjects anymore because it’s so much work to find novel ideas. If you have a solid foundation on a subject, just keeping up with developments in the field via social media will keep you up to date.
There is a trade-off between reading and writing (or otherwise producing content). Both reading and writing require deeper attention. They may not be what Cal Newport calls “deep work,” but high quality reading or writing requires some amount of exertion that feels like work. From experience, I could read 200 pages in a good day (in about 3 hours or so), but the next day I would only manage a few dozen pages (if that). My conclusion, having troubleshot lots of activities is that I typically don’t like doing more than 90 minutes of anything in a day.1 I don’t feel like reading on days where I’ve written high volume, nor writing on days that I’ve read high volume.2 And that’s to say nothing if I’ve worked my day job on those days! Now, there’s lots of reading and writing that can be passively, the literate-equivalent of watching reality TV, but I’ve found those experiences undesirable on days where I’ve exerted myself. There are some writers and reader who can read for hours and hours and hours. I don’t think most people are like that in the same way most people would not willingly train for an ultramarathon.
Reading about 10 books on a subject doesn’t make you an expert but will make you conversational. Expertise, competence, and understanding are, to me, three different things. Reading will give you understanding, but not expertise and competence. I have a better understanding of economics, philosophy, psychology, and other fields simply because I’ve read a dozen or so books on these subjects. But I wouldn’t say I’m an expert on any!
People who don’t read underestimate how beneficial reading is for them. This one is pretty simple, we have a lot of brain rotted people because they lack the patience and other cognitive abilities to sit and wrestle with a single subject for an extended period of time. Many people who can’t do this used to be able to, but gave away their cognition to social media algorithms and addictive content.
People who read a lot overestimate how beneficial reading is for everyone else. Reading is great, but I think it’s overrated. I don’t regret reading as much as I have, but I don’t see myself reading nearly as much in my 30s as I did in my 20s. I think everyone should try to read somewhere between 12 and 20 books a year (1-2 books a month). Reading more outside of certain phases of your life will probably hurt your productivity and income. If it doesn’t do that, it’ll probably hurt your sociability, physical health, or something else. I’m in my early 30s and starting a family soon. When I look at the list of things I need to prioritize in a day, between family, work, necessary relaxation, eating healthily, exercising, and writing on my substack, reading is not a priority. Some of these things I didn’t have to worry about five years ago. I think most people are the same way.
You may ask “what about your job?” My job is doing multiple things in an 8 hour period (or so). It’s not 5 tasks or less than each take 90 minutes+
There is some data/evidence out there that low effort activities like scrolling or watching trash TV between intense attention sessions actually helps replenish our attention spans, but it doesn’t escape the fact that most people can’t really push past 3-4.5 hours a day of deep attention. I think reading and writing is often less intense than deep attention, but I’d still put the outer limits at 6 hours at absolute maximum.
In my subjective opinion, whether writing amoints to deep attention depends on what sort of writing you're doing.
Reading fiction is a form of low stakes entertainment. Writing it, in many cases, is probably only a bit more difficult for someone whose mind is naturally attuned to the task.
Writing an immersive epic that involves extensive world building is probably a few steps higher up the "ladder" of cognitive tasks. Tolkien's legendarium took a lot more mental labor to construct than your average novel. There's a reward side to it as well, of course, which is why books about writing fantasy often warn the reader of how easy it is to get lost in world building forever and never complete the novel it was all supposed to be for in the first place. Drawing maps of imaginary places and building imaginary historical timelines are child's play compared to the labor of writing the tale itself.
This probably has something to do with why, also in my opinion, history books are often far easier to write and also much harder to read with any level of engagement than a well-written work of historical fiction.
The thing that makes the difference is the characters themselves. All those other forms of writing don't include the thoughts, actions, experiences, and motivations of human beings. It takes much more effort to place yourself within a character's perspective and write what they experience than it does to simply use static description to relay what happened, which is what history books do.
Very different levels of attention are required, in my opinion.