I found Why We Read to be a real mixed bag. It consists of essays by prominent people (several of whom I had actually heard of and, in some cases, read) about why they read non-fiction and sometimes about why everyone else should read non-fiction. They vary from the concise, pithy and thoughtful to the insufferably pompous and pretentious.
The good essays are really good. George Monbiot makes an excellent case for the written word as solid, checkable information in a world where much is denied or obfuscated. Richard Dawkins thankfully avoids religion and writes beautifully about how wonderful reading about science can be. Esme Weijun Wang (whom I don’t know) talks personally and affectingly about how reading may allow one at least a glimpse of the paths one has not taken oneself. Niall Ferguson is great on the importance of the exercise of the imagination when reading, Alison Bashford’s excitement on browsing Malthus’s library is delightfully infectious...and so on. However...
There are 70 essays here and I found many to be rather hard going for one reason or another. There is an awful lot of self-conscious style on show here; many – although thankfully not all – of the writers here seem to have made a massive effort to write eye-catching prose, which is by no means always a pleasure to read. Abhjit Bannerjee (also a new name to me), for example gives us this. “I read to step inside the game and play: to spot the rhythms, the very special way the consonants knock into each other, to hear the echoes, internal and external, make connections and guess the ones the author wanted us to find.” Oh, really? Well, knock yourself out, Abhjit. Gerd Gigerenzer (not heard of him either) takes a very long time indeed to say that reading extensively may bring greater understanding of and empathy with other people and cultures, finishing with “In this sense, extensive reading is an obligation, even a moral duty.” But in another, probably more accurate sense, it’s something to be encouraged rather than a duty to be imposed.
There’s plenty more of this kind of stuff elsewhere – often with a generous sprinkling of oh-so-casual lists of the high-powered books they just happen to have read. Even the opening essay by Anthony Aguirre (nor him) makes the good but fairly simple point that the huge volume of verbiage now churned out everywhere is not necessarily adding to human knowledge and that we need to be carefully about picking out substance from waffle – and ironically almost submerges the point in a load of pretentious waffle of his own. (And, my word, does that point apply to this book!)
An overall rating is rather difficult. The good essays are well worth reading, and there are a good many more of those that I haven’t cited here. There is also a lot of pompous, self-regarding stuff, too. You’ll have to decide for yourself whether finding the former will make wading through the latter worthwhile.
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