This was a week of frustrations, large and small—a dearth of reading included. I managed to get through a few pages of Anna Seghers’s Transit at the park and enjoyed them. Other than that, I didn’t read this week, nor work on YouTube videos, either.
On the surface, life without books continues on as normal. You work, you work out, you do the errands, and you try to escape the frustrations. You fill up the time with innumerable little things and thoughts, ranging from great to terrible. (I spent a lot of time listening to documentaries, watching YouTube comedy, and playing Tetris.)
But a week without books feels strangely incomplete. The brain of anyone who has been a bookworm since the age of five is inevitably shaped towards reading, and so to stop reading is like removing a necessary portion of one’s diet. It feels like being adrift, psychologically, and the initial novelty of floating in space gives way to feelings of unease and homesickness.
As dramatic as it all sounds, it really does encompass what reading means to me, and why I ought to read several times a week if not every day. It doesn’t even have to be a great book. I can recall many a so-so or even bad book that at least kept me mentally engaged with something greater than a YouTube short (AKA last week’s TikToks).
Sometimes reading feels like taking vitamins instead of savoring chocolates. And that is as it should be, because too much candy makes you ill. But it does take some discipline to maintain even a lifelong habit, and a break from reading is sometimes what you need to gain perspective.
Classics Considered 
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