Libraries Are For Lovers
Yes, it’s the 14th of February, when everyone’s thoughts turn to the heartfelt pleasures of … books and libraries. Right? I mean, that’s the only thing people celebrate on 2/14, Library Lover’s Day? I’m pretty sure it is. (Hi, I live under a rock where Hallmark can’t penetrate.)
As some of you may know, I block my content out ahead of time, because productivity! So it’s just a coincidence that I’m writing this right after we found about the morons in Tennessee - #notallTennesseans, to be sure, but THIS bunch right here - who decided to ban the graphic novel Maus from classrooms.
Banning a book about the Holocaust is a really bad idea period, but let’s note that the year 2020 was the third highest year for attacks on Jewish people in the US. Banning books is always a bad idea.
When I was a kid, my parents would bring home books from the library and tell me not to read them because I wasn’t “old enough”. So naturally those were the first books I read out of our library haul when my parents weren’t around. DUH.
I know so many business owners who claim they don’t have time to read, and don’t read fiction because it’s beneath them or not productive or something. Actually, they end up not reading at all. Maybe because the books they think they should read are not that interesting to them.
Is that you? Hit up your local library - especially if you haven’t been there for a while - and pick up some books that actually look interesting. Not the ones people tell you to read, if they’re not interesting to you.
You’ll find all kinds of other stuff going on at the library too. My local one just got a 3-D printer, and there are all kinds of classes for kids. Plus crafts, book clubs, etc. If you haven’t darkened the door in years, you might be surprised.
I’m always talking about reading, and no, it’s not just because I’ve written three under my name! (OK, if you absolutely must look at them, here’s my author link on Amazon.)
What kinds of things can reading bring to your life?
Learn a skill, technique, or background/history
This is where business owners tend to think they need to start. You can, of course, if you want to. Plenty of business people have written books about various aspects of their expertise. But you absolutely don’t have to.
Some people like to read biographies. I don’t, unless I find the person very interesting. I think my last two were Shoe Dog by Phil Knight of Nike fame and the latest one on Shirley Jackson. Honestly? You’re not going to absorb whatever made the person so successful by reading their book.
Books for business owners don’t have to be in the self-help or leadership section. Maus is about history.
Don’t stop here at the “must learn a specific thing” point, though. There are far more things to gain by reading than acquiring someone’s 10-point checklist on project management or whatever.
Discover other people’s perspectives
Many business owners would benefit from this. Not everyone has your background, and finding out how other people think about things, yes, even in a fiction context (gasp!) could help you get better at your thinking.
Maybe you think a certain group of people thinks one way. You start reading some representative authors and find out it’s different. Not only can this make you a better person, but it could actually help your business too.
One of my new absolute favorite books comes from author Olga Tokarczuk, called Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. It is so good. I giggled my entire way through the last chapter or two, because they were SO. GOOD. Even though I don’t necessarily relate to Polish crones.
It’s also Black History Month, so it’s a really good time for us white and other non-Black people to pick up some Black authors. My favorite nonfiction book from Ta-Nehisi Coates is We Were Eight Years in Power, a collection of his essays.
Toni Morrison is being banned too, so check out some of hers from your local library, like Beloved. That one gets banned a lot - and being banned is a sign that it’s probably a pretty good book.
Develop empathy
You know what non-fiction does NOT do? THIS. It’s by getting inside someone else’s head that you develop empathy. I love unlikeable and unreliable narrators, and they’re great for this.
As a business owner, why should you develop empathy? Well, do you want to keep your talented staff around or no? Recent leadership literature all talks about how top-down command-and-control is DEAD, and that leaders need to have empathy in order to inspire their followers.
Relax
Look, I’m never going to recommend anyone read the 50 Shades trilogy, not because it’s smut (it’s too boring for that) or because it’s BDSM (because it isn’t, it’s the story of an abuser and a doormat), but because it’s really badly written.
But on a day when you don’t feel well or it’s rainy or snowy outside, why not curl up with a “guilty pleasure”? Maybe it’s a spy book, or romance, or mystery, or sports novel or beach read. Nothing wrong with an easy read that doesn’t challenge you too much and maybe takes you to a fun place.
I don’t think that YA (young adult) should be the main reading material for actual adults. Yes, that is an extremely unpopular opinion among other readers and yes, I will die on this hill. However, once in a while when you need something light, or you just want to find out what your kids are reading? Go for it.
Expand your world and your mind, man
You don’t even need drugs to do that! (Even if you did a lot of mind expansion in college or high school, ahem.) You can explore characters and stories from other traditions, or just have your mind, like, blown.
One difference I’ve noticed between non-American films and American ones is that we’re very big on tying up every string and providing an explanation for what happened in the previous two hours or so. Non-American films are like, yeah, we’ll just end it here, in the middle of the story.
So reading books that end somewhere and leave some strings intentionally dangling is mind-expanding too. Maybe the author doesn’t wrap everything up, and you have to figure it out. Or you accept that’s as much as the author wanted to tell you and leave it at that.
I recently read Mona Awad’s book All’s Well - and if you’re fan of Willy Shakes, this is a really good one. I recommend it to anyone, Shakespeare fan or not, even though I’m not entirely sure what happened. Which is part of why I recommend it.
Focus time
In a constantly distracted world, finding interesting books is a great way to practice single tasking. Just read your book. You’ll probably have a really hard time at first, because you’re only doing one thing.
But do that one thing with an interesting book. One that you want to read and not necessarily one that you “should” read, and see what happens. Just try it for a bit each day, maybe at night before you go to bed when you need to be off your screens so you can sleep. Do that for a month and see if anything changes.
Don’t think you have time to read at all? Add up all the hours you spend binging your favorite shows on Netflix/Hulu/Prime whatever. We both know it’s a lot. Start by taking 10% of all those hours to read a bit instead.
Recap
Lots of reasons to love reading and love your library too. If some books don’t intrigue you, don’t bother with them. But read so you can develop yourself and your business. You don’t have to stick to nonfiction or books that bore you to grow as a person.