Reading, what a marvelous activity. Being able to make sense out of a bunch of lines and circles on a page, arbitrary symbols that express the thoughts and worldview of people who could have died centuries or even millennia ago; and also even the possibility of being moved by it or of learning something new. A most valued pleasure in which we seek some comfort for our lives, and a “complex pleasure”, that because complex, it’s neverending; and contrary to what it’s probably more widely believed, as once Borges said, also a way of life.

And yet, as great as it is, it’s not always as exciting as we would want it to be. So, what should be done? Should the reading of a book be abandoned when it starts getting boring? It could be said that if it is being done for the sake of pleasure, then that should be perfectly fine, but I think most of us have felt a sensation of guilt after having abandoned the reading of a book. Because, more often than not, besides reading to entertain ourselves, we also read to acquire knowledge. This not only transforms reading into an obligation, but makes us think that in every book we don’t finish we’ll be forever ignorant of an invaluable, life changing piece of information, unless we go back and finish the book. I like to believe that that’s not the case, that there aren’t books with some important and unique thoughts that can only be found inside them, and that life is too short, and the books too many, for spending one’s time reading boring stuff. If a book contains some great insight about life, and if that insight is really that important, I’ll find it somewhere else; and if after all, the book was really that good, then maybe I’ll come back to it in the future, when I’m able to enjoy it.

I say this, but sometimes I also wish that I could just enjoy reading whatever, as I think Cervantes once said, that he pretty much enjoyed reading anything with letters on it. I don’t actually know what would be the actual advantage of being able to do so, besides maybe making it more difficult to get bored. Because, at the end of the day, having a taste for everything might be quite different from having a taste for learning anything. I wouldn’t see much value in reading a book, let’s say, about anatomy, and after finishing it say: “Yeah, it had a bunch of letters on it, good stuff. Didn’t quite like the images though”. Probably it wouldn’t end up being exactly like that, but maybe it wouldn’t be that far either, afterall, learning requires a big deal of thinking and putting knowledge into practice, and making connections with other things, so just reading isn't enough. I guess that it would be better to wish to be a curious learner rather than just an avid reader.