Follow the 'Reading Rules'

My husband Jonathan came home from school this Wednesday shell-shocked because he was done. Done with everything. Every paper, short response, exam, and long-term project had been flung into that peculiar electronic void that somehow makes colleges run. This pushing around of papers, books, and ideas makes students believe a large cloud of duty and anxiety will break over their heads for the duration of their lives. They often have no concept of leaving work at work and going home, because for four years schoolwork has been their home. Frequently, at the close, exhausted students have to relearn the basics of life: how to read a magazine from front to back, how to watch an entire movie without feeling overwhelmed with guilt. Not all colleges are the same in regard to this demand. But I walked across the same stage Jonathan will on Saturday, and I do not exaggerate.

A couple weeks ago, another graduating senior asked me what I recommended reading right after college. I looked at her in disbelief. I remembered that after four years of college syllabi, I was done taking, much less requesting, that kind of advice. Impressed by her epistemic humility but horrified lest she read for the rest of her life mainly to satisfy the expectations of others, I told her about the “Reading Rules.”

Have you, at any time in your life, grown accustomed to reading for utility instead of pleasure? If you are like me, and especially if you have recently been to college, you will have to reinvigorate your loves. I developed the Reading Rules over this year. You follow them like this:

This year, for the first time in several years, I exclusively read books I really liked. I again became the me I remembered—the little girl who loved words, named her dictionaries, kept a high stack of books, and found pencils in her bedsheets. I reread the books I loved as a child. I liked them so much I read them in the shower.

To the bookish but burdened graduates of 2015: Follow the Reading Rules. They will do your heart good.