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The greatest travesty of the free world is the under use of knowledge. Walk into your local bookstore and inhale. Smell that? That’s the smell of infinite knowledge. Walk into your local library and look around. Amazing.
-MJ DeMarco
I always enjoy going to the barbers, not least because a good haircut makes you feel better- a side benefit is the chance to have a one on one chat for 20 minutes or however long it takes to get a short back and sides. Partly it is because you generally visit the barber every 6 weeks which is a good stretch of time with things changing in your life- new jobs, new girlfriends there is always plenty to talk about.
A a rule I take a book to the barbers. Sometimes I barely get through a page and other times whole chapters. On my last visit, I pulled up a seat and donned the cape. The first thing the barber said was ‘‘gee was that a book you were reading over there, you never see that’’ (this is not even the first time it has happened). The book in question was How to Survive by John Hudson. John is the UK military’s chief survival instructor and this is not your typical how to survive on maggots, ala I’m a Celebrity, but rather a great collection of harrowing tales on survival and lessons you can apply to your corporate life. Do check it out!
But this is not a book review (that can wait for another time), rather a look at how the simple act of reading in 2021 is now remarkable. If money is our ultimate form of trust, some would say power. Then books are portable knowledge, best-selling author Stephen King goes a step further and believes that books are ‘portable magic’. So if there are these vast repositories of magic known as libraries why have over 800 been closed since in the last decade around the UK?
The creative process
Being an author is often a fruitless pursuit. According to the numbers on Amazon, researchers estimate that 0.0025% of authors are successful (sell at least 1000) copies. (That is an even lower percentage than the current return on current account cash deposits!). We might have the feeling that many authors are coining it like JK or John Grisham but this is survivorship bias in action.
So why would a writer bother to sit down and spend hundreds of hours typing away, re-draft after re-draft if there is very little chance of getting paid? From what I can gather it is because they believe they have an important story to tell, one which will improve readers’ lives and either entertain or inform. For others, it may be that they enjoy the process and it helps to clarify their thinking by getting ideas down on paper. Perhaps it is the thought of leaving something tangible behind that can be picked up hundreds of years from now.
Whichever it is there is no doubt that technology is helping- it is relatively easy to self-publish and everyone with a GoDaddy account can start a blog. When it comes to investing it is much easier to learn from the mistakes of others rather than go through the pain of losing money yourself. One of the most accessible and engaging books on investing to come out in recent years is JLCollins’ Simple Path to Wealth, which focuses on building a portfolio of index funds. Interestingly JL commented on a recent interview that he weighed up going with a publisher but felt that all they would offer was a small amount of marketing. He went it alone and several thousand copies later — it looks like it worked out. His reason for writing was to pass on these guidelines for managing money to his daughter, again another example of success being a by-product rather than being the initial goal.
Not a fair fight
Let’s be honest, libraries are up against it. The social media giants have an army of developers and psychologists tweaking every button to harvest more of our attention. Have you ever noticed that there is a short delay when you open an app — it could flash your feed up instantly but instead the doubt… ‘ will I have a message, comment or like creates a bigger spike of dopamine or leaves us craving more.’ Is it just a funny coincidence that they call us users the same as drug dealers? If this were a boxing match the referee would have called time already!
The government is doing little to support our libraries
“Finally, Mr Johnson appears to suggest that the country can only afford libraries when there has been an economic recovery. As we have commented time and again, this is a fundamentally misguided policy. By investing in libraries, you create opportunities for education and skills across the country, which in turn creates the conditions for future economic growth.”
There are signs that the pandemic has somewhat reversed the decline in reading with print sales having their best year in a decade. Confined to our homes we have all been craving escapism through the latest best-sellers and also the connection that relating to an author brings. But as the world opens back up will these new habits shift? It remains to be seen -if my trip for haircuts are anything to go by I’m not that hopeful! They are even getting rid of the newspapers.
I guess I will have to look further afield for a book club!
Here are my top six favourite books:
And what I’m currently reading:
