When reading becomes performative, society suffers
THE LOVE OF BOOKS IS BECOMING SUPERFICIAL
I don’t know when this happened, but sometime over the last decade, maybe even less, reading suddenly became cool. Not only that, reading has become a cultural signifier, a badge to identify yourself with, to let people know you are a certain kind of person. A person who reads.
As a lifelong reader myself, I still remember the days when I hid the fact that I read (and wrote) books. I grew up in the 90s when being called a nerd wasn’t as celebrated as it is today. In fact, being a nerd dampened your social experience and without any social media to escape to back then, if your direct environment was chaotic or anxiety-inducing, you were trapped in nerd hell.
As much as I appreciate this shift in perception, much of it feels aesthetic instead of intellectual. We’ve arrived at a place where appearing to be a reader has overshadowed reading. And when I read headlines like “The Elite College Students Who Can’t Read Books,” I wonder if this aesthetic has seeped into day-to-day life and will ultimately do society more harm than good.
That headline I mentioned above is a real one. It’s a story in The Atlantic that discusses the very real circumstances U.S. college professors at elite schools are facing in their classrooms. Students can’t read full books. Not all the way through and not in the allotted time professors assign. Students are complaining that being asked to read a full book in a week or two is too much. And get this, because I’m being serious here, these elite college students are telling their professors that they never had to read full books in high school. Instead, they read passages that were complimented by videos or other forms of media and then asked to complete whatever assignment based on their overall understanding of what they consumed.
That Atlantic article was posted in October of 2024 so we’re in a bit of a chicken or the egg situation here. What I mean is that college students not being able to get through full books may be the symptom of the aesthetic culture of reading or it could be a cause. Let’s dive a little deeper.
In 2022, Ashley Tisdale did one of those Architectural Digest interviews where celebrities show off their homes. When she got to her bookshelf, fully adorned with over 400 books, she admitted, on video, that “These bookshelves, I have to be honest, did not actually have books in [them] like a couple days ago.” In fact, she told her husband to go purchase the books because Architectural Digest was filming:
“Obviously my husband was like, ‘We should be collecting books over time and putting them in shelves,’” Tisdale says. “I was like, ‘No, no, no. Not when AD comes.’”
I thought it was weird at the time, but then I had another thought: why was it so important to be seen as a reader? Despite the slander that Tisdale received, I actually thought it was a win for books, authors and publishers that reading was so in vogue, celebrities were willing to lie about the habit. Also, I don’t think all celebrities are lying about their love of reading.
One of my favourite YouTube videos is this one of Kristen Stewart talking about her lifelong love for books. I’ve watched that video many times. You can clearly see how passionate she is and how reading plays a vital part in her life. Same for French actress Alma Jodorowsky. She speaks elegantly about how books have shaped her existence, and how reading in English has opened her mind to new experiences and allowed her to enter into stories from a more intimate perspective. I’ve also watched this video many times and I am inspired by the love these women have for reading.
Dua Lipa has a book club, so does Reese Witherspoon. These pop stars are embracing reading and sharing that passion with the world. I can’t begin to tell you how happy that makes me. The more books get exposure to popular culture, the more empathetic, informed and intelligent our society will become. Right?
But here’s the problem: When something becomes popular, it gets commoditized. People start envisioning it as an opportunity rather than an experience. Reading should always be an experience. Something intimate, transformative; something that acts as a mirror or a window to your world or new ones. This is true of even “casual” reading.
When it becomes an opportunity, though, that’s when reading descends to an aesthetic. People are no longer as interested in the transformative nature of reading, they just want to leverage the attention that the perception provides. Ashley Tisdale may have gotten flack, but at least she was being honest. I suspect too many self-proclaimed readers share the same mindset but are dishonest in their presentations. That dishonesty may seem harmless, but when you parallel that ostentatiousness with a shockingly declining literacy rate, it becomes far more inimical to broader society.
According to Statistics Canada, half of the adult population reads below high school literacy levels. When speaking of kids, one million Canadian children are below reading levels. And with roughly three million children who are at reading age, that number becomes more disturbing. In the U.S., the situation is even more alarming. Recent studies from the National Assessment of Education Progress “showed that not even half (43%) of fourth graders in the U.S. scored at or above a proficient level in reading. And for marginalized students, the numbers are much worse: just 17% of Black students, 21% of Latino students, 11% of students with disabilities, and 10% of multilingual learners can read proficiently by fourth grade.”
That, my friends, is a crisis.
How is it that from one perspective, the perspective we see on BookTok and in YouTube videos, that reading is this cool thing that everyone wants to pursue. But from the other perspective, the one of actual daily life, reading levels are declining so substantially?
This is why I say that the aesthetic of reading is dangerous. Presenting reading as cool is one thing, actually teaching your population to read is something entirely different. And the fact that this decline in literacy rates is happening in seemingly wealthy countries is confusing, especially given the connection between literacy and poverty. Without going into conspiracy mode, one could almost be led to believe that this decline has been intentional. But let’s not go there. The known reality is frightening enough without us getting into speculation.
So what is actually happening here? Are we reading or are we not? If these statistics hold true, then we’re raising a generation who will not be able to read at a level sophisticated enough to enjoy books. If they can’t read the books that authors are writing, what happens to the industry? More importantly, what happens to society as a whole if the literacy rates continue to plummet?
Teachers are already ringing alarm bells, but is anyone listening? Educators are fighting so many battles right now — banned books, declining school budgets, etc. — and I imagine it’s hard to put into context how vital reading is to our understanding of society, community, politics, and life in general. Plus it’s tough to make education “pop culture.” It typically exists somewhere outside the zeitgeist, nestled between academia and the economy.
That said, I see movements to combat this. There’s something called Reading Rhythms I found on Instagram. They hold reading parties at different locations across New York city and get hundreds of people out at these events. Organizations like Rebels Girls have been promoting reading and literacy for years and doing it in a fun, exciting way. It will take quadruple the effort if we hope to turn the trend around.
I think of Booktok and the impact it has had on reading. On the positive side, people who engage with BookTok read far more books than those who don’t. Consider some of these statistics:
48% of TikTok users read more books than before the use of BookTok.
The average American user of TikTok is reading 60% more books compared to the period prior to exposure to BookTok.
62% of TikTok users from the US have read at least one book based on the recommendation from BookTok.
The biggest increase in reading activity due to BookTok is recorded in Maine, where 80% of users read more after using the platform.
In Canada, it’s much of the same:
Over 53% of BookTok visitors from Canada reported that they increased their reading activity due to the use of the platform.
BookTok also increased the number of books that the platform’s users read annually by 58%.
Additionally, over 70% of Canadians that visited BookTok have read at least one book based on the recommendations from the platform.
I mean, those are some encouraging numbers and all from the use of a single platform. But that same platform is the main perpetrator of the reading aesthetic. The visual appeal created by BookTokers — splendid bookshelves lined end to end with hardcover titles, comfy chairs and cups of tea — creates an image of reading that becomes alluring. These influencers will also reflect visual queues taken from the books they are reading.
The visual that most stands out in my mind is that of Dark Academia. This is the aesthetic popularized by Donna Tartt’s The Secret History and revitalized with R.F. Kuang’s Babel. When you think of the Dark Academia aesthetic, think wool blazers and tweed coats, black, dark browns and deep greens, gothic style architecture with wood features, and books — lots and lots of books.
In this way, reading isn’t just about diving into the words on the page, it’s about creating an impression of the environment of a reader. And while in some ways this makes reading feel more accessible for the general public, it also romanticizes the experience. I’m not saying reading isn’t a beautiful thing. I’m saying reading takes time and your full attention, and no matter what aesthetic you create, you still need to read the words on the page for books to have any value.
And that’s another one of my concerns; are these influencers actually reading every book they promote? Or are they, like the elite college students, merely skimming or reading sections while most of the titles act as decoration for the world they want to project? A world in which a good number of them are now getting paid to project or produce content in hopes of future compensation.
I don’t want to pin this all on BookTok. YouTube (BookTube) promotes the same ideology and if you’ve ever scanned the book section on Pinterest, it’s like walking into versions of paradise. Again, taken in a singular context, these aesthetics aren’t a bad thing. But when we have the seeming elites of our culture struggling to read whole books, so much so that professors feel forced to cut reading loads in half, then I think it’s worth noting the potential effects of these aesthetics.
But what do you think? What are the implications of these aesthetics? And how do we deal with this falling literacy rate?
You always post such thought-provoking pieces! Although I agree with the idea that people like the idea of reading more than they actually read, I'm not sure the inability to read a full book - at least in the case of the college students cited in that Atlantic article - is because of this. Just thinking back to my own high school days, I really did struggle with quite a number of books that were assigned in my lit classes. I graduated HS almost twenty years ago. We were always assigned the "classics" and I didn't feel like we properly taught how to read them. So when we had to finish a book I could barely understand in a few weeks, I did need to consult SparkNotes. I did the reading, I just didn't know what I was reading. The problem there, in my case, was my sub-par education (and I was in honors classes, too!)
I feel this very deeply. Even though I also like reading and writing I have started to cringe at the commodification of the perception of being a reader instead of actually reading deeply. It’s like when I first moved to the big city and shamefully thought if I dressed and acted like early 1960s bob Dylan I’d magically become a great artist. Truth be told I’ve made much better art as a boring looking middle aged dad than I ever did as someone embracing the aesthetic of being an artist.