Recent ≠ better
“What an astonishing thing a book is. A flat object made from a tree on which funny dark squiggles are imprinted. But one glance at it and you’re inside the mind of another. Maybe somebody dead for thousands of years. Across the millennia, they speak directly to you.”
- Carl Sagan (American astronomer, astrophysicist, and author) in his television series, Cosmos: Season 1, Episode 11 - The Persistence of Memory
More and more, we’re consuming media designed to be seen once. Read once. Enjoyed for a moment. Maybe liked. Maybe shared. Then forgotten.
Here’s the average age of content we see on some popular media platforms.
Snapchat: < 24 Hours
Instagram Stories: < 24 Hours
Instagram Feed: < 3 Days
Facebook: < 5 Days
Twitter: < 2 Days
It’s all ephemeral.
As if anything published two weeks ago is no longer worth reading.
Of course that’s not true. None of the following influencers have posted anything in the last few weeks: Marcus Aurelius. Emily Dickinson. The Apostle Paul. Frederick Douglas. Flannery O’ Conner. Rumi.
If we’re going to read anything that has withstood the test of time, we’re going to have to seek it out. It’s unlikely to show up on our social feeds.
And here’s a tip.
It’s better to read old books than new books. We can take advantage of the filter of time.
Across the globe, we publish ~2.2 million new books annually. How do we know which ones are worth reading? We can’t read them all.
If you’re 30 years old and read an average of 12 books a year, you’ll read 624 more books in your life. Assuming you live to be 82. Out of millions of books, which ones should make it onto your list of 624?
If you read older books, you have an advantage. We know which books contain timeless truths, not just passing trends. Because they’re still relevant today.
Here are five books first published in the 1950s that are still in publication:
On The Road, by Jack Kerouac
A Raisin in the Sun, by Lorraine Hansberry
The Old Man and the Sea, by Ernest Hemingway
Notes of a Native Son, by James Baldwin
The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, by CS Lewis
Those are five books worth reading.
We don’t have to go overboard with this and only read books published 200 years ago. Only recently has anyone other than white Christian men had a voice. Because of this, some of the great books in history were never published. And depending on the author’s race or gender, some had to be published anonymously. In 1818, Mary Shelley published Frankenstein anonymously because women authors weren’t taken seriously.
But don’t just read new books either. Consider reading a book that’s 10 years old instead of 1. A book that’s 50 years old instead of 5. A book like Arabian Nights, originally written in Persian and translated into English in 1706.
There are a lot of great new books. But as a rule, it’s better to read old books than new books. Not because all the books written 70, 200, or 400 years ago are better than the 2.2 million books published last year. But because if you’re still aware of a book written decades or centuries ago, it’s passed through the filter of time.
If it passed through that filter, it probably tells a timeless truth.
And if it tells a timeless truth, it’s probably worth reading.
