it's time we made reading cool again
on how books are here to stay and reading is going nowhere
1. well used is well loved is well read
much to the chagrin of family and friends who have shared books with me through life - i’ve folded, creased, scribbled, marked pages with abandon. you know when you’re in a second-hand bookstore and come across a tattered paperback with tons of scribbles and notes in the margins? that book’s been well loved.
turns out, in this attention-deficit epidemic that’s affected our collective brains, this may just be the hack!1
Most people treat books like delicate objects. They keep them clean, pristine, and absolutely unmarked. A creased spine feels like a wound. A note in the margin? Unthinkable.
But in 1940, a man named Mortimer Adler said this attitude was nonsense. His short essay entitled How to Mark a Book argued that writing in your books isn’t defacement — it’s a sign of life. The only way to really understand a book is to engage with it, argue with it, and respond to it.
Today, science backs him up. Studies in educational psychology show that annotating a text dramatically improves your retention of its contents. In some cases, readers who engage actively with what they read by marking a book remember up to seven times more than those who don’t.
2. is it the device or is it just me?
reading needs to be made cool again, else it will inevitably lose in the screen-crazed battle of devices & platforms. do ebook readers2, then, help? is this the real use case of ‘dumb phones’?
A methadone-like treatment for cell-phone addiction—that is, a tamer and less addictive version of the real thing—doesn’t seem to work.
i quite enjoyed this piece in the new yorker. algorithm or not, perhaps we can all still be saved by the human compulsion to want to be better :)
CLICK HERE: What Phones are Doing to Reading
3. the books are doing alright kids
this is a really good piece that unpacks book sales, how to understand the statistics (often misleading!), and why there is no need to hit the panic button on book sales…just yet. but also, damn, the math of book selling is pretty complex.
Is one billion plus a lot of print books? Depends on your point of view. For comparison’s sake, there were 825 million movie tickets sold in the US and Canada in 2023. So roughly as many books are purchased as movie tickets, two somewhat comparable entertainment options in terms of price. OTOH, that’s new movies in theaters versus all books in publication. Additionally, far more books are published each year than movies, meaning that—as everyone knows—most individual movies are watched far more than individual books are read.
Whether this number is big or small, it’s fairly stable. Print book sales have not been decimated by digital sales/streaming. That’s right, despite the introduction of ebooks, various Netflix for books services, and endless cries about the death of publishing…. overall print sales have held pretty steady. And when we add in ebook sales, that means overall book sales are actually increasing.
and my fav reminder, that book sales is not equal to book reading <3
4. poetry interlude!
but all they want to do, is beat the poem with a hose…oof.
![POEM] Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins : r/Poetry](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!z6vM!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F282ae093-cfce-4f24-871d-3fefc53af69f_1080x1643.jpeg "POEM] Introduction to Poetry by Billy Collins : r/Poetry")
5. indie resistance and publishing a revolution
years ago i went looking to refresh my copy of ambedkar’s annihilation of caste at an indie bookstore3, and i stumbled upon a nondescript blue cover edition. closer inspection made me curious about the publisher and having understood & appreciated all they stand for since then, it’s been “see navayana, buy navayana”.
I wanted to see Navayana survive as a publisher – but without operating as a trust, society, NGO and such like. No 80G or FCRA. I foreclosed the possibility of Navayana being funded with big grants. I made this choice out of a vague ethical notion of not making capital out of caste and inequality, especially as a savarna.
the journey…
True, being a savarna gives you social capital and the munificence of the savarna network. Disinherited by my small-minded middle-class brahmin family for marrying outside caste, I have been lucky to have some generous friends, but I can’t keep asking them for more. If I find more such well-wishers among Navayana’s many anonymous readers, this delicate translucent fish – which always moves in a shoal – may well thrive in the ocean.
and the purpose…
Like with everyone everywhere, work at Navayana has been affected in more ways than one. The scholar Anagha Ingole, who is working on a Savitribai Phule reader for us, said, “I am increasingly convinced that the moral intellectual task of our age is to fight against the terrible normalisation and even celebration of stupidity.”
CLICK HERE: How Navayana was born, and where it is going now
well done on consuming this post. you may count it as “something you read recently”.
until next time & new reads!
🌻
~ rufus
this means that i was right all along. a visionary, if you will. just wanted to make that clear.
if you’re my secret admirer reading this, please note that i would love to have the BOOX Palma Reader, thank you & kind regards.
buy as much from indepepdent bookstores please! slight premium to pay for a clean conscience. also, amazon doesn’t need (more of) your money.