Subverting Our Reverence for Books

Until last month, I hadn’t writ­ten a Book Note in just over two years. I admit that’s a long hia­tus, but I was still taken aback at an email that asked, Does that mean you haven’t read a book since 2006? I blog, there­fore I am? Cour­tesy of Pierre Bayard’s How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read, I now have the per­fect retort for the next hia­tus: That all depends on what you mean by read. Accord­ing to Bayard, we have many ways of relat­ing to books beyond not read­ing, includ­ing skim­ming, skip­ping, for­get­ting and glanc­ing at cov­ers. As cul­ti­vated peo­ple know, Bayard tells us, cul­ture is above all a mat­ter of ori­en­ta­tion. Being cul­ti­vated is a mat­ter of not hav­ing read any book in par­tic­u­lar, but of being able to find your bear­ings within books as a sys­tem, which requires you to know that they form a sys­tem and to be able to locate each ele­ment in rela­tion to the oth­ers. This book is a delight­ful anti­dote in a soci­ety that holds read­ing sacred. It does indeed encour­age you to talk, guilt-free, about books you haven’t read, but more than that will make you remem­ber why you love read­ing in the first place.