My Maoist bookshelf

My 5 year plan to read more books than I bring into the house

Whenever I move house, books account for a ridiculous proportion of the volume of stuff in the removal truck. They’re an even higher proportion of the weight lugged up and down stairs. Books are usually the first thing I unpack while resavouring forgotten editions and figuring out a new scheme for organising them on the bookshelves. This time I’ve reduced the number shelved in the living room in favour of keeping it “light” in there with gaps in the books for pottery and secondary lighting. Many are now relegated to a rather dark hallway that has floor to almost ceiling shelves for a range of books, not too tall and not too deep.

A little further along the hall is a small alcove where I built some simple shelves using wood left over from building the garden office. I call these my Maoist bookshelves, because they represent my own personal 5 Year Plan. These shelves contain the books I will read over the next 5 years. I had to set up a system because I was constantly dipping in and out of my new books and rarely finishing any of them. That didn’t stop me adding to the pile of new books.

So I’ve decided to be much more disciplined about my reading. I know that many people have lost the ability to read a whole book. It’s not that people don’t read any more, they do, they read all day, but long-form reading is a muscle they find more difficult to flex. Like any muscle it just takes a bit of practice to counter the atrophy. I’ve got my book reading mojo back and the new system is serving me well.

There are some 80 to 90 books on my Maoist shelves. When a book is finished, it moves to the bottom shelf. There’s no particular order of reading planned. I just take the next book that I fancy. Like all good systems there’s flexibility. The shelves aren’t entirely full, so new books can be added, but I’m managing to read more books than I buy at the moment. And of course if someone buys me a really good book, I can’t say, “Ask me in 5 years if I enjoyed it.”

Dematerialisation

Although I probably have more stuff than ever, much of it is now digital. I don’t own any music to speak of, it’s just all there and available by touching a small screen. Likewise for a huge collection of films. A 21st century’s of photographs rest “out there”, not in my home. Podcasts have always been digital and flow like a digital stream where possession isn’t really the point as another one will come along soon. Even musical instruments and games are digital and live in the hunks of aluminium and glass called my laptop/iPad/phone. Almost everything has dematerialised, but books persist in meatspace. Sure, I’ve dabbled with eBooks and audiobooks and sometimes, I’d say that having an author read their own non-fiction book is a superior experience, but on the whole, I’d much rather see that book up there on the shelves and be able to see the pages in print. Is it a shallow, self-branding exercise? Perhaps. But the Maoist bookshelves are not in a public area of the house.

Materialisation

Keeping my books visible, has a cost. It takes space and can be overwhelming in terms of reading progress. The 80 or so books on the Maoist shelves offer a kind of constraint that makes the task of reading more manageable. The invisible 5 year time constraint, that only lives in my head (and your’s now, I suppose), adds further to the constraint. I see the stack of books everyday when I leave the bedroom, so it’s not a task tucked away in a file in a box at the bottom of a cupboard.

80 books in 260 weeks is a book every 3 weeks or so. That’s doable. The time scale is long enough that it makes most things seem managable and 5 years passes quicker than most people realise. It leaves room for slacking and frenetic periods of reading. It means there’s scope for short books and double volumes of great tomes.

The stacking of the books with a decent timescale results in task focus and removes the bigger picture. The movement of the books to the bottom shelf as they are completed give a visual reinforcement of progress and the actual act of regular reading to the point of completion (rather than dabbling) is habit forming.

Re-materialisation

In an on demand world where so many things are accessible there’s a danger that everything is available and nothing gets done. Everything is shallow and nothing sustained.

I’m happy with my new system. In writing about it i’ve made it sound joyless, but the joy in is sitting down to read and I don’t really care if that exists within a joyless system.

Finally, I’m struck by the fact that my films, audiobooks and music can be altered or taken away. I don’t have that problem with my books. Page 59, Paragraph 3 will always start and end with the same words they did last time I picked up the book.