A Thought Peace on Reading

I was listening to a podcast recently, a comfort listen, when a discussion came up around reading. Specifically, how does one feel about reading a physical book versus listening to an audiobook, and…are they the same thing?

In summary, yes, reading with your eyes and listening with your ears are different experiences. But difference does not equal deficiency. Audiobooks increase access for people with disabilities, neurodivergent readers, caregivers, exhausted humans, and anyone whose life doesn’t allow for long stretches of quiet time. Insisting that only one method counts as “real” reading isn’t intellectual rigor. It’s gatekeeping.

Later that day I kept grappling with the question, why was that even a question worth asking or discussing? Namely, does it matter if, how, and why a story or an account enters the body, and why does society feel compelled to rank these experiences? Is there in fact a more legitimate, serious, intellectual, inclusive, available? But wait, does that even matter?

Ultimately, this isn’t really a debate about formats but a debate about value. About whether someone gets to claim an identity as a “reader” without an explanation. 

This thought thread, as I like to think of it (ahem, rabbit hole), then led me to my next thought pattern. Beneath the surface of this audio book discourse, which I think can feel like a distraction, is actually something older and deeper:

The history and art of reading. And what this says about intellectualism that ties into the pressure of reading. The way reading has been transformed from an intimate, human ritual into a site of performance, productivity, and cultural status.

And that’s the conversation I’m actually interested in having. So, let’s shall we?

I started researching the history of reading. Long before reading was aestheticized or moralized, it was necessary.

Historically, reading focused around the transmission of language, story, and meaning. Some may argue that reading, in fact, has been foundational to human survival.

Writing allowed civilizations to move beyond fragile memory and into continuity. It preserved histories, codified laws, sustained belief systems, and carried stories across generations.

From ancient Sumerian cuneiform tablets (c. 3200 BCE) to Egyptian hieroglyphs, from oral traditions later transcribed into epics like The Iliad, reading was never about self-improvement or intellect signaling. It was about remembering…who we were, what we believed, and how to live. Reading made time portable. It made ideas durable. It made meaning survivable.

It was never meant to be a flex. Or was it?

Today, reading is no longer private. Although I’m not sure it ever was, and it still can be. 

Today, there is the option to track it. Quantify it. Display it. Goodreads tells us what to read next, how long it should take, and how everyone else felt about it. We rate books publicly, sometimes before we’ve even had time to sit with them. After finishing a book, I often find myself immediately searching for someone else’s interpretation, not to deepen my own understanding, but to calibrate it.

Did I get it right? Did I miss something? Was I supposed to like this?

The ritual shifts. Quiet becomes public.

I was an English major because I loved reading.

Ironically, being required to read multiple books a week nearly stripped that love away. Reading stopped being about curiosity or enjoyment and started being about output. I felt obligated to have thoughts. To highlight passages that sounded smart. To perform insight. Reading became labor.

I remember sitting in a first-day writing class when the professor asked what kinds of books we liked to read. Instead of answering honestly, I answered strategically. I said Chuck Klosterman (Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs) because it felt like the right balance of cultural criticism, journalism-adjacent, intellectual but approachable. It felt like the “cool” answer.

The truth was simpler: I loved escape.

I loved being inside other lives. Other worlds. Other ways of thinking. I loved Harry Potter. I loved The House of the Spirits. I loved romance novels and books that made me feel too much and books that made me cringe.

Some books made me think. Others made me feel. And I didn’t want to have to justify either.

A few years ago, I decided I would stop forcing myself to finish books I wasn’t enjoying.

This felt scandalous. Shameful, even. As if abandoning a book was a moral failure rather than a preference. But life is finite. Attention is precious. Reading is not penance.

When reading becomes punishment, the ritual collapses.

Putting a book down wasn’t quitting.
It was consent.

In today’s age, there’s a persistent cultural whisper that reading is inherently superior to watching a show or scrolling social media. I’m not here to discuss that hierarchy today.

What I do know is this: the experience of being lost in a great book feels remarkably similar to binging a show I love. I want to cancel plans. I want to disappear. I want to stay inside that world just a little longer.

Reading a good book becomes all-consuming. And when it ends, there is grief. Re-entry is hard. Real life feels louder, flatter. Less saturated.

So again: why the hierarchy?

Reading is not a personality trait.
It is not a competition.
It is not proof of virtue.

Reading is a ritual.

A way of pausing time.
A way of being alone without being lonely.
A way of remembering who we are and imagining who we could be.

So; what are we reading this year? How are we feeling about reading? What are you excited to pick up, and what are you giving yourself permission to put down?

I have complicated feelings about the ritual of reading.

And yet…I still love it, sometimes. 

Whether it’s one book a year or many a month.

Warmly,

Coco @ Sacred Ordinary