Against the Algorithmic Tides: Why You should Choose to Read a Book this Summer
You don’t need me to tell you that you should read this summer.
People have enough guilt about not reading. It’s ever present like the guilt of not exercising or not eating enough vegetables. When I meet people and they find out I enjoy reading, they often respond with various forms of self recrimination: “I use to read a lot a more,” “I get so distracted lately,” “I’m always tired and just want to crash and watch TV,” “My kids have launched a prolonged campaign against all peace and quiet in my life,” etc. It’s no surprise then that when summer rolls around, people think it’s about time to atone for their indolence and remove the inertial mass that stands between them and a library.
But right at the beginning of our journey to read more, we run into trouble. There up ahead lies the impassable question: What should I read? There’s so much to read, a veritable ocean of books. “[Y]ou find yourselves adrift in the ocean, with pages and pages rustling in every direction, clinging to a raft of whose ability to stay afloat you are not so sure,” as the poet Joseph Brodsky described it.
This obstacle is nothing to fear. In fact, I want to argue that, seen from a different perspective, this obstacle is one of the useful and beautiful things about the enterprise of reading. The challenge of picking a book, if I can venture to use a metaphor, is like the tree that crashes across the road in that poem by Robert Frost “On a Tree Fallen Across the Road,” and whose purpose:
… is not to bar
Our passage to our journey’s end for good,
But just to ask us who we think we are
The impasse can, on a different view, be seen as an opportunity for reflection. Joseph Brodsky later remarks in the essay quoted above that the ocean of choices drives us to develop our own compass, our own sense of what we like and don’t like. (He suggests doing this by reading poetry, a recommendation that I heartily approve.) In other words, we have to find out who we are.
We’ve grown lazy about these kinds of choices.
Companies like Netflix have developed sophisticated algorithms that tell us what we should watch next. That’s why people don’t feel overly attached to their television choices. They can openly admit to watching something stupid because we all understand it’s not wholly a user choice. Tell a person what you’re reading, though, and it still feels dangerously self-revealing.
Are we in danger of being controlled by algorithms? Are those algorithms slowly pushing us into larger and thus more easily exploitable groups? Are we becoming ever more homogenized in our interests and tastes while being assured of our specialness and individuality? Do these forces conspire against the “manifold wisdom” that we should exhibit as the people of God? I’m just asking questions here (but yet).
My point is this: Choose a book that appeals to your situation and interest.
You first have to find out what those are. Jump in somewhere and go from there. If you don’t like something, ask yourself why you don’t like it. That’s a step in the right direction. A bad motivation to read is guilt or the need for validation; A better motivation is the desire to overcome your limited perspective on the world. The former motivation takes on a few predictable forms; the latter takes on forms as varied as human beings themselves.
There’s a thousand good reasons you should read this summer. I’ve fixated on one. Choosing a book to read helps you resist the algorithmic tides that want to determine the course of your intellectual and emotional life and allows you to stake out your own course to new isles of possibility.
Yes, I have overplayed my hand and attached romantic significance to choosing a book where there may be none. Nevertheless: You should read a book this summer.
