Into the dreaming

If you’re an avid reader, this post is not for you. This is a post for lapsed readers whose brains have been fried by social media and who long to read again but don’t know where to start…

Last Saturday I sat in a room with about 117 strangers, all of us hallucinating and time travelling and creating wild spaces out of wood pulp, pixels, and airwaves.

It was the Cape Town chapter of The Silent Book Club, and I had joined the crowd at Bertha House quite by chance.

I was looking to drop off two books for Robyn of @MusingsofaSouthAfricanBookWorm and she had suggested I meet her at the monthly reading group. I hadn’t initially planned to stay but had thought better of that and brought along two books I’d wanted to scan through as part of some research for the story I’m working on.

My book choices were less than ideal, but what a total thrill it was to see so many people reading. More than that, it reminded me how grateful I am to myself for retraining my brain to read.

From Silent Book Club Cape Town’s insta

I mean, it’s not like I ever stopped reading, but the speed at which I was getting through a book had ground down to the pace of a stoned sloth and I was starting to unlearn how to stay focused on anything longer than 140 characters.

The twitterfication of my brain meant that, unless it was for work, my “reading” became scanning tweets, insta captions, and news headlines. Essays and books fell by the wayside, which, for the most part, wasn’t terrible terrible at the time because I was writing my own books and sometimes you don’t need the cross pollination right? But still. The inspiration tanks eventually run dry.

So, I had to make a decision to retrain my brain to read.

The first thing I did was to clear my bookshelf of all the books I thought I should read. This cut my collection by about 30% and the weight of obligation and guilt by 100%. What I was left with were books I loved, those that were meaningful to me for other reasons, those I use for research, and then a small handful of books I’d always wanted to read but hadn’t gotten round to. The proviso was: no new books until I’ve read at least three or five from this pile.

I also reread books I loved. I’d choose a book I’d read maybe 20-plus years ago, something that had really tickled me, and just let my reading brain find the familiar path through the words. Even if your tastes and outlook have changed rather dramatically, it’s a frictionless reentry to reading and gets all those bookish neural pathways lighting up again. (Some of my rereads were more successful than others. Dark Dance from Tanith Lee was shockingly bad but a strong progenitor I see now of today’s dark romantasy; Anubis Gates by Tim Powers got me watching some of his interviews and loving his author self as much as his books.)

I started reading books I really want to read. I don’t read the books clever or trendy people say we should read. I don’t read a book because it’s so hot right now or because it won a prize. I don’t finish a book that makes me want to tear my eyes out. I prefer books that have an element of the fantastical and don’t care for the dreary or the gritty or the realistic. That’s not to say I will never read these books, just that they don’t spark joy and I’m okay with not forcing the issue. I’ve done my share of the bookish shoulds. Life is too short and my attention span too challenged. The result? I’ve started feeling excited about reading again.

I allowed myself to accept where I like to read, and how I like to read. I can’t really read in bed, I can read on the couch and in the bath. I like physical books, I don’t like ebooks or audiobooks (although I have started listening to His Black Tongue by Mitchell Lüthi which I’m enjoying, so that might be my gateway drug). Find the format that works for you and choose the space that works for you.

I also had to physically start retraining my brain to learn new things by downloading brain apps like Elevate and learning to crochet. Next it will be a new language and sewing. I subscribed to newsletters with well-written essays that were easy to digest – longer than 400 words, shorter than 3 000. I found the long reads that really interested me and made a point of finishing them, even if my concentration flagged.

And, of course, I limited my mindless scrollingscrollingscrolling… Thank God Elon fucked up Twitter, Meta’s fucking up Instagram and Facebook, and I never signed up for TikTok.

Now here I am. Reading again. Calm-like. Enjoying it. Very mindful. Very demure.*

What I liked about The Silent Book Club (and you can find a chapter anywhere in the world or start your own) is that if you feel like you can’t find time in your everyday life, you could probably make a date for reading once a month. It’s a slow start, but it’s a start nonetheless.

So there you go lovers, go forth and find your way to the good stuff. It’s worth the effort. Don’t let the multibillionnaires turn your mind into mush for their shareholders. If you think about it that way, reading is an act of resistance. Pick up a book and take back your brain.

Until next time.

Flies for your toad and a flame for your fairy lamp,
Tanya

*This phrase isn’t going to age well since it’s the latest meme that will disappear by next week, but I still like it.

Some links you might like

Silent Book Club
Silent Book Club chapters
Silent Book Club Cape Town instagram (featured here)

Photo by Johannes Plenio on Unsplash

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