Why bookshelves and rituals matter — my 2018 book picks
Thanks for the tips. I'd love to read, but I don't have the time.
A reply often accompanied by a shake of the head and a long, guilty face. I was much the same. By the time I was about twenty-one I'd read about as many books as a below-average lumberjack has fingers. In other words, not many. If you'd like to read and your answer is like the one at the start of this paragraph, I have a list of recommendations and something to help you read. Rituals. My own rituals, which let me read 23 books in 2018.
Rituals and the magic of a bookshelf
I have two rituals. The first happens in a bookshop when I have at least an hour. I ceremoniously make my way from the bestsellers and my favorite genres to ones I don't normally read. I start the second ritual when I finish reading or listening to a book. I go upstairs to the bookshelf, gather a whole stack of books, carry them carefully down to the bedside table, and leaf through them one by one, reading little excerpts.
Why are those rituals important? They keep my bookshelf stocked. The books are right at hand, and I also have a choice of at least ten titles across different genres. I can pick what suits my mood because I like switching genres. I don't have to work out what to read next, then track it down, and forget in the meantime that I wanted to read something.
If you're worried about buying books and never getting to them, don't worry, because it’s ok to buy books and not read them.
Old habits die hard
I read regularly before going to sleep and take whatever I'm reading wherever we go for the weekend. How long I read depends on how tired I am. Sometimes I manage a paragraph or two, sometimes twenty pages. I don't stress about it. If I don't want to bother anyone with the light, I reach for my Kindle or an audiobook.
I can't imagine going to sleep without reading or listening anymore. I listen to audiobooks regularly in the car, where I spend two to three hours a week. They don't shorten the trip, but they make it more pleasant. I feel as if I've used the time better. Besides, listening to audiobooks has never made anybody carsick. You can't say that about reading in the back seat.
Book picks from 2018
These are the books from last year I'd recommend.
- For fiction that's closer to reality than you might think, definitely try Blackout: Tomorrow Will Be Too Late, about our dependence on electricity and what happens when it fails across Europe. Don't worry, there are no zombies or other post-apocalyptic science fiction. The book is frighteningly realistic. I guarantee that after reading it, you'll go check your pantry supplies and get yourself a transistor radio and a propane-butane stove.
- Some books are a pleasure to return to, especially light reads. The entertaining stories from the life of Nobel Prize-winning physicist Richard Feynman never disappoint: What Do You Care What Other People Think?The British assassin hired by the OAS to kill President de Gaulle is one of the craftiest characters that master of crime thrillers Frederick Forsyth created in The Day of the Jackal.
- If you like Cold War espionage but want a true story rather than fiction, I recommend Three Minutes to Doomsday. Chance and tedious detective work peel away the layers like an onion until the investigator reaches one of the biggest espionage cases. The complacent Americans come off as complete amateurs, letting one of Europe's most closely guarded defense secrets be stolen.
- If you're from my generation, which grew up reading Score magazine in the early nineties, I recommend the cyberpunk novel Ready Player One, which you'll read in one sitting. The pitch: old games and virtual reality.
- Speaking of the nineties, I try to read at least one biography. Last year it was George Lucas: A Life. He's the man who gave the world the Star Wars and Indiana Jones series. I still remember those films vividly from poor VHS copies with single-voice dubbing that was often inaccurate.
- If you haven't seen the Entebbe film about the Israeli army and special forces' masterstroke, that's fine. I recommend No Mission Is Impossible: The Death-Defying Missions of the Israeli Special Forces. It covers a number of operations from Israel's fight for survival in the Middle East that might be even more daring. There have been more wars there than Jaromír Soukup has TV shows.
This week I finished the book Luboš Račanský recommended, The Code Book, and it was a good choice. The author follows the contest from antiquity to the present between cryptographers, who invent codes and encryption algorithms, and cryptanalysts, who try to break them. It's the kind of book where you keep coming back to certain passages because you aren't sure you understood them. Or you look up more details, such as number theory.
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