The Unexpected Benefits of Reading at Random

As someone who has spent much of the last half-decade trying to “make it” as an author—an increasingly slippery ideal, I fear—it feels bizarre to admit that for much of my adult life I didn’t read fiction at all. Sacrilegious, even. Like so many other writers, I’d loved books as a weird, shy child, finding them refuge, friend and escape all wrapped into one. But as someone who’s a very slow reader, I just couldn’t keep up with the volume of reading that was demanded of me as I progressed through school and then university.

If we had to do assigned reading at home for English, it would take me ages and sometimes I’d have to cram pages in breaks before class. By the time I was studying for my undergrad, reading felt like a chore I couldn’t keep on top of. I stayed up late to finish articles and usually only managed a couple of chapters of books that were assigned in their entirety. When I had any free time, the last thing I wanted to do was struggle over more reading.

Then, in a quintessential story of reconnecting to reading, I moved to a new city at twenty-four. I was lonely and often very sad. I was in a long-distance relationship, I hated my job, I had an undiagnosed disability that sometimes caused me such agonising pain I couldn’t leave the house. It turns out circumstances such as these will push you back to considering novels as your friends. To reading in bed when you can’t do anything else. To imagining yourself in different worlds.

I used to feel stressed about reading all the hot, trendy books, getting caught up in the emphasis publishing puts on newness, but now I’m much more likely to read an older book than one steeped in hype and discourse.

At first this rediscovering of reading was delicious. I read on my way to work, distracting myself from the dread of going into the office. When it felt impossible to see friends or go out in bleak London weather, I had a cozy activity to do at home. I found my own taste, reading a lot of heartbroken free verse poetry by young women, plenty of queer romcoms and what the industry might describe as “contemporary women’s fiction” like Big Little Lies.

But after a few months of borrowing from the library, I felt like I was back in a bit of a rut. The book accounts I followed largely recommended the same books (frequently those with the largest marketing budgets), prize lists often had the same titles appearing on their shortlists and most of my friends who were readers had similar taste to me. Having just repaired my relationship with reading—and taking tentative steps with my own writing—I didn’t want to lose it again so soon.

Just before Christmas 2019, a friend told me that the less they know about a film, the better. If they see a trailer or read too much about it, it makes them less likely to want to watch the film. They explained that there’s something about encountering a piece of art with as few preconceptions as possible that makes you meet it where it’s at, on its own merits. This also basically made them uninfluenceable, I realized. Why not try it with books?

I started off by picking up books from the library in the tube station near my house, swapping ones I’d read for whatever caught my eye. I might glance at the blurb but considering I was choosing from a limited selection, I usually had no choice but to pick something I wouldn’t normally gravitate towards. I asked family members—often older with different interests—if they’d got any books they were looking to pass on. I joined a book club with people with different taste from me and made myself read the books, even the ones I didn’t like the sound of.

My reading has certainly got less aesthetic as I have read more randomly. My shelves don’t always look beautiful but they are a lot more varied than they were before. I used to feel stressed about reading all the hot, trendy books, getting caught up in the emphasis publishing puts on newness, but now I’m much more likely to read an older book than one steeped in hype and discourse. As a debut novelist, it’s particularly reassuring to remember the (hopefully) long lifetime of a book. I still pay attention to diversity within my reading but I find that I actually tend to read more by Black authors, authors of color, working-class authors and queer authors this way as often the books that gain the most buzz and marketing budget are by white, middle-class authors.

Through this approach, I wasn’t ever trying to be a reading martyr or consciously “improve” myself. In fact, I started reading more commercial work and I still don’t finish a lot of books. But I see that as a good thing. If anything, reading more randomly has freed me from the idea that there’s things I “should” be reading and let me see reading as something communal. Even if I never get to meet the people who’ve left books in Little Free libraries, there’s a shared thread between us strangers.

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In How to Nothing Jenny Odell talks about how resisting the idea of an “authentic self” can be a way to resist capitalism because to be changeable makes you a moving target for advertisers. Having a fixed idea of yourself can become something a bit like being a brand (something authors will be all too familiar we’re increasingly told to cultivate). I think the same could be said for reading habits. Knowing what you like is one thing, but so much of what we read is dictated by what sells—or at least the idea of what sells. It’s not only what gets published, but what is easily discoverable out of the books that do get published.

Books are more likely to reach your eyes or ears as a reader if they have a larger marketing budget. You’re more likely to see them on your socials if they get a larger mailing to a greater number of book influencers. Obviously virality around a book can happen outside of this (with I Who Have Never Known Men being perhaps the most extreme example), but in general publishers spend a lot of money trying to ensure you see the books they most want readers to buy.

Reading at random has allowed me to step outside what I would have previously described as my “brand.” Since allowing myself to read beyond the narrowly prescribed idea of literary prestige, I’ve learned so much about plot and readability from novels I would never have otherwise picked up or even been exposed to. Rediscovering Witch Child and Pirates! by Celia Rees through discarded books from a family friend reminded me how essential a good story is alongside writing quality. Picking up locally produced zines made me think about DIY ways for sharing art and seriously consider why someone might choose them. Reading more non-fiction like Rental Person Who Does Nothing by Shoji Morimoto reminded me how many forms books can takes with its short vignettes interposed with images.

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It wasn’t until a writing friend with a background in publicity said to me that I’d written a “genre-bending” debut that I realised I had—or the ways in which broadening my reading changed my writing. My novel, These Mortal Bodies, lies in the campus novel side of the dark academia tradition. But, although contemporary, the book has a historical subplot loosely inspired by King James VI and I’s horrific obsession with witches and the subsequent persecution and execution of ordinary people, mostly women, across the UK. It also explores modern-day preoccupation with tarot and manifestation, and leaves it up to the reader to decide whether there are any “real” magical elements. Whilst I’ve always been interested in hybridity and blurring boundaries between genres, my literary diet of novels-in-verse mixed with middle grade Own Voices stories alongside epic fantasy meant I didn’t think anything of mixing these elements together.

Since allowing myself to read beyond the narrowly prescribed idea of literary prestige, I’ve learned so much about plot and readability from novels I would never have otherwise picked up or even been exposed to.

I think my omnivorous reading habits may have contributed to me writing a book that was harder to market. It’s hard to say gothic campus fiction but with a historical subplot and elements of magical realism quickly. I’m not going to say I don’t care about how well my book does because that would be a lie (obviously!). But I am glad that I included the elements I was drawn to and that a huge mix of genres, forms and styles was fueling my imagination before and during writing These Mortal Bodies.

Indeed, the vast majority of books I’ve encountered are far more nuanced and expansive than a marketing category can convey. That’s probably obvious but with it ever harder to earn a sustainable living from writing or writing-adjacent work, I’m increasingly talking to other authors who are considering writing “to the market” and I completely understand why.

Obviously reading at random won’t solve all the issues with unequal advances, difficulties in sustaining a career, and lack of diversity in publishing. But it has helped me encounter the unexpected. To recognize that there are so many books out there that I have very little chance of coming across on socials or print media. To be inspired by writers from a whole range of backgrounds across a whole range of genres. To get a little closer to freedom within my writing and reading.