Book Box | What I brag about when I brag about reading

Reading 150 books is like money laundering for time: I feed in frustration, waiting, and avoidance, and what comes out is this erudite, exhibitable total

Dear Reader,

Reading is the most practical escape hatch ever invented.

Today I want to brag about reading 150 books a year.

In the age of book lists, where everyone from Bill Gates to Barack Obama is publishing their reading, it seems like this is one brag that will be accepted. Reading books makes you a better leader, a better communicator, a better strategist and, in short, a better human being. Or so the research tells me. I wouldn’t know - I mostly read to avoid doing actual work.

For most of my life, reading was a guilty pleasure I had to defend, ration, hide, or apologize for.

’Enough reading now.’ ‘Put away your book.’ These were the calls I dreaded. I was forbidden because I had to study, I would spoil my eyes, and, worst of all, ‘because I say so.’

Then there was the scarcity. At my convent school in Jamshedpur, we were rationed out one slim book a week by the librarian, who decided Three Little Pigs was my level when I craved Agatha Christie. The Beldih Club library allowed a few more.

For the rest, you simply re-read. I re-read The Secret Island. Literally 25 times. Also The Circus is Coming. The Scarlet Pimpernel. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes. Pride and Prejudice. I even re-read The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich.

Today I brag to celebrate the abundance of the printed word. It feels miraculous. A new paperback costs less than two coffees. Entire libraries live in my phone. Classics are free on Project Gutenberg, audiobooks stream from Spotify, and book swaps materialise every few weeks at local bookstores. The rationing is over.

I brag because reading is the most practical escape hatch ever invented.

When the house tenses up - my father’s voice rising, the silent treatment from my spouse- I don’t storm out. I simply open a Tana French novel and vanish into a Dublin murder investigation. For an hour or more, I am gone. I return calmer, the real-world problem now framed by the perspective of another world.

And then there are all the people who keep you waiting. Interminably. Indigo Airlines. The plumber. My welder at the building site. I pull out my Kindle and suddenly I’m in Hazaribagh, then Hong Kong, following The Elsewhereans on their journey. Time spent waiting becomes time spent elsewhere.

Reading 150 books a year sounds impressive.

I brag for the sheer alchemy of it. I transform an addiction into a virtue. Thus I deflect attention from the overdue invoices I must send out and the writing pitches I ought to be working on. Is this procrastination? Perhaps. But I prefer to see it as strategic withdrawal. Reading 150 books is like money laundering for time: I feed in frustration, waiting, and avoidance, and what comes out is this erudite, exhibitable total.

These 150 books are how I understand other minds, other countries, other centuries. They’re how I learned about the extremes of mothers and daughters (Mother Mary Comes to Me), about AI ethics (Empire of AI), about what it’s like for a child to grow up in Morocco (A Life Full of Holes).

Some people meditate. Some run ultra-marathons. Some eat a hundred rasgullas. Me? I read.

I read while invoices age gracefully and emails wait patiently for my personal growth to conclude.

Once a year, I tally up the books on Goodreads, Audible, and Storytel, announce the number, and enjoy the respectful silence it produces. No one asks how. No one asks what didn’t get done.

Reading 150 books a year sounds impressive.

“Didn’t pay the bills on time because I was in 12th-century China,” somehow does not.

We all choose our vices.

Mine just happens to look respectable.

What about you, dear Reader? What are you avoiding by reading this?

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Sonya Dutta Choudhury is a Mumbai-based journalist and the founder of Sonya’s Book Box, a bespoke book service. Each week, she brings you specially curated books to give you an immersive understanding of people and places. If you have any reading recommendations or suggestions, write to her at sonyasbookbox@gmail.com. The views expressed are personal.

Books referred to in this edition of Book Box:

Three Little Pigs Traditional English Fairy Tale (Various authors/retellings)

The Secret Island by Enid Blyton

The Circus is Coming (also published as Circus Shoes) – Noel Streatfeild

The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen

The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich by William L Shirer

The Elsewhereans by Jeet Thayil

Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy

Empire of AI by Karen Hao

A Life Full of Holes by Driss Chraïbi and Paul Bowles