A few weeks ago, my mother handed me a box of old primary school report cards. She’s doing something called Swedish death cleaning, where you slowly shed yourself of everything you’ve been hanging onto. She’s not dying or anything, just decluttering.
One comment on my year three report card caught my eye. “Thomas is an enthusiastic and eager reader,” wrote my teacher. “He can often be found sitting silently in the corner tucked up with a good book!”
As far as I am concerned, Year Three Thomas knew what he was doing; this is how reading is supposed to be enjoyed: quietly, privately, without fanfare.
The internet has decided that being a reader makes you sexy and mysterious, but I remain unconvinced by the hot newcomers. Credit: Michael Howard
This brings me to the 8:09 am train to the city and the man seated in front of me. Conventionally good-looking in a Jude Law kind of way, he surely works in advertising, based on the logo-free luxury of his totally neutral wardrobe. The rest of us doom-scroll until our eyes hurt, but he is doing something far more noble: reading Infinite Jest by David Foster Wallace.
At least he appears to be reading it, although I notice he spends much of the commute taking photos of himself with the book rather than immersing himself in it.
As a lifelong reader, I am well aware that the first rule of Book Club is that you should never judge a book by its cover, but I can almost guarantee these pictures will make it to his carefully curated Instagram, where other hot, cool readers will praise both his choice of novel and his general aesthetic.
A cultural shift has transformed reading into a status symbol, a subtle flex for It Boys and Girls, a way of signifying your connection to a more enlightened and enviable class.
As with most problems in modern life, we can blame two things: the internet and famous people.
My lifelong hobby has been hijacked by a hot, cool crowd
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23.03.2024
A few weeks ago, my mother handed me a box of old primary school report cards. She’s doing something called Swedish death cleaning, where you slowly shed yourself of everything you’ve been hanging onto. She’s not dying or anything, just decluttering.
One comment on my year three report card caught my eye. “Thomas is an enthusiastic and eager reader,” wrote my teacher. “He can often be found sitting silently in the corner tucked up with a good book!”
As far........
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