You're Already a Better Reader Than You Think

Welcome to the first weekly letter from A Mug of Insights' new home! From now on, I'll dispatch these letters on Saturdays, and paid subscribers will receive their 1-2-Read letters on Mondays. If you like what you're reading, consider upgrading to the Grande tier for journal prompts and a practical exercise every week to strengthen your reading muscles! Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week.

Life makes no sense.

I had this thought when I was staring out of a shabby studio on the 9^th floor four years ago. I was waiting for 70 bucks to come in from a teaching job so I could afford groceries. I was ignoring calls from an ex-girlfriend and kept refreshing my email, hoping that a piece I had submitted to a student magazine had been published.

That night, I read something that rubbed me the wrong way, but it has stayed with me ever since. It was from the book The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, where Andy wrote:

“As soon as you stop wanting something you get it. I’ve found that to be absolutely axiomatic.”

But at the time, this line infuriated me because it was impossible to stop wanting. $70 marked the difference between living on coffee beans and having decent meals for a week. The phone call marked the difference between a quiet night and bickering. And that piece in the magazine was my first break as a writer. That desperate wanting was my fuel.

Four years later, life still makes no sense.

My fridge is full of a week’s food, I’m in love with a wonderful person, and I’m racing to finish a manuscript for my first book deal. But when I had coffee with a filmmaker friend, Hano (who has seen me through the thick of it), we were still two ungrateful SOBs.

“When I first moved to Melbourne, all I wanted was to make rent while slurping on instant noodles.” He said as a wire transfer from ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) paid out a gig he did. “See this?” He put his phone against my face, “I can buy a whole truck of instant noodles with this.”

“But our dreams just turned into work, huh?” I said, thinking about those 500 words before breakfast, 1000 words before dinner and a page of HTML code before midnight.

“You know, sometimes I do miss that crazy feeling of going after something.”

See, here’s where Warhol makes no sense: It’s not that when we stop wanting something we get it, but it’s that when we get something we stop wanting it.

This touches so many parts of my life. When I was crazy about understanding what Derrida was on about, that desperate want kept me in the library past closing time. When I wanted to find my voice as a writer, that lust kept me up at night. But the minute I get the thing I vowed to get, it disappears and just becomes a coffee machine humming on a Tuesday morning, an editor chasing my ass and a pile of checked to-do lists.

This also ties in with reading. Remember that post on The Curse of Knowledge? It’s hard to teach reading skills because they’re transparent to competent readers. It’s just what they do when they crack open a book, but none of it is obvious to someone who has just started.

Also, just like how Hano and I were ungrateful SOBs, there’s a chance that you’re underestimating your reading abilities. A skill like reading plays hide-and-seek and is almost impossible to measure on a spreadsheet, and the only way to see how far you’ve come is to revisit books you think are beneath you.

Back when I was in high school, I struggled to get through a self-help book like Cal Newport’s Deep Work. Then, when I dragged it out of a dusty box the other day to cite a quote for my book, the writing felt too easy to be true. The rest of the evening disappeared, and I realised that I’d read through the entire 304 pages in one sitting.

This was a crazy idea for high school Robin. I would’ve done anything: sell my possessions, shave my head and join a monastery one day to have the focus to read a whole book in one sitting. But because we’re ungrateful humans, we’re always looking for more.

Everyone tells you to read difficult books, stretch your abilities and never rest on your easy reads, but here’s the thing: this endless growth is missing the point. The whole point is for you to read anything you want with ease, and, just like weight training or martial arts, the joy comes from doing what felt impossible with ease.

This became a rule of thumb for me recently: whenever I get a bit crazy about something, I’ll relax and deliberately underperform and meet myself where I’m at. Can’t finish a page of a difficult French novel? I’ll do a paragraph. Can’t write 1000 words a day? Let’s do 500. Can’t stand the thought of reading for an hour? Let’s do 30 minutes.

This removes the crazy from wanting something, so that our progress becomes steady, measured and above all, fun. The French have this idea that I just love: La Plaisir de la Lecture (the pleasure of reading), and authors who write about it are not shy to lavish attention on the inherent joy of reading (Daniel Pennac is a wonderful writer on this subject).

So, from time to time, take out a book you think is beneath you. Dwell in it, devour it and savour it like it’s a work of genius. Even journal about how pleasurable it is to read. Because, in this culture full of toil and serious books, maybe Andy had a point. As soon as you stop thirsting for more, you’ll get exactly what you’ve always wanted: reading what you thought was impossible with a smile on your face.  

Until next week

Robin