The 2023 Reading Challenge

We are one month into 2023 and so far I have read four books in four weeks. The aim of reading one book a week, so far is going well. I have read Last Book to Woodstock, A Man Called Trent and Riders of the Dawn as well as The Hunt for Red Octobre and The Cold Killer.

I have a tendency to buy and collect books faster than I read them. Having a love of books is good, because it shows that we want to read/hear stories and that we want to learn about a diversity of topics. As I read in one article “a library is a catalogue of the things that we would like to learn more about. I like this idea. I like the idea that books are about what we would like to learn.

As I have said more than once, collecting books is easy, it takes seconds to pick one up. The challenge is to devote seven or more hours per book, once you own them.

Three out of four of the books I finished this year areaudible books. Audio books are more expensive than normal books in many circumstances but I find them easier to finish. If I read a book it’s usually at night, until my eyes are too tired to stay open. With audiobooks I read when I am walking, cooking or driving. I walk and hike a lot so that gives me an hour and a half to read, per walk/hike. That gives time to read one book a week.

Now is a good time to think about taking the time to read because people are getting excited by the prospect of having AI write instead of humans. At a time when people no longer take the time to read, getting AI to generate more material to read seems a step in the wrong direction. I like to read. I like to be taken on a journey by writers. I don’t want to read something written by chatGPT. I want to read something written by a human being. I want to listen to books read by human beings. Apple is using AI to read books aloud, instead of Humans.

And Finally

I think reading challenges are negative because they encourage us to choose short books that we can read quickly, rather than longer books. Having said that they encourage us to listen to books rather than podcasts. I used to love podcasts but this pandemic has changed that. Now I like books. With any luck I will eventually read books faster than I collect them. I left the Inspector Morse book I read as a physical book, in a lending library. If I read physical books I can start leaving them in the villages I walk through.