Owning the book doesn’t make it read

As better ways of doing things evolve, we have other ways to read books than actually holding printed paper in our hands, as glorious as it is! 

We can listen, read a summary abstract, talk about it in a club, on an app, or have someone read it to us. 

We can skim and scan and not even read the entire thing!

Oh, yes we can. 

Or do we think we have to read each book the ‘proper’ way ... word after word, cover to cover?

Some people give a book an hour (I prefer a day) to explore and get familiar with it. And then dive in further, for longer, if it’s a match. 

I have no guilt about books piling up, unread. It’s ‘Tsundoku’ in Japanese - acquiring reading materials but letting them pile up without reading them. 

Our pile o’books may signal what we hope or intend, but our action makes it so. Having the unread book on my shelf doesn’t give me the learning that’s in it. 

A book a week, a month or a year ... or 100+ books a year; whatever your appetite, satisfy it. 

Me? 
I go for a Spanish Tapas style:

Tasty morsels in small doses. Perhaps several in one sitting. Happy to return to my favorites. Some hard copy. Some digital. Some sound bites. 

The perfect book

To read a book is a joy. 
To collect books is also a joy!

Have you noticed what you think as you start to read a new book? 

Are you open and curious, ready to explore or are you expecting something else?

Do we expect reading to be a frictionless, perfect experience? 
That we will sit down at the perfect time and read the perfect number of pages...

Or we will read and understand it perfectly because it’s perfectly structured, edited and presented?

Maybe we hope that the book, this book will be ‘the’ book, the perfect one that will answer the big questions we have, give us the perfect advice or address our biggest need.

Our expectations can at times set us up for disappointment. 

And at least knowing what our standards and expectations are before we start something can help. 

Whether we are reading a book, or writing a book or launching any kind of project, tap in to the expectation or hope you have for it. 

And know that perfectionism can still show up in the standards we have for other people and other things ... as much as it shows up in the standards we can have for ourselves.  

As we read, write and work, progress is still better than the unreal ideal of perfection.