I’ve not been a good book reader for some time now.

At some point, I developed a self-defense mechanism against reading long books. I would say to myself, “The author is just trying to make a buck, instead of writing a blog, he/she produced 300 pages that I’ll now have to waste my time on”.

The only books I’ve read are recommendations from some old Reddit comments, where I found a whole thread of people praising the book—that, in my mind, gave it a necessary credit.

I’ve changed my attitude after listening to a random podcast that Spotify suggested. The podcast is in Polish.

It’s a podcast from a school teacher who analyses books by reading a few sentences and trying to figure out what the author meant. Something about the slow pace of the reading about the maturity of the podcaster was very compelling to me.

On that specific podcast, he was talking about the book “How to read and why” by Harold Bloom. The explanation was clear and specific. The author made a note that we are already drowning in information, and it’s the last thing you might need. You don’t read a book to get information (mostly). You read a book to find out what wisdom it holds, how the author thinks, and how the author connects the dots. According to Bloom, you should read books for joy and according to your interests.

Reading is an exercise for the brain, as is writing.