The Unfinished Library
Why I have eight books on my nightstand and zero completed
I’ve got eight books sitting next to my bed right now. Not eight books I’m reading. Eight books I’ve started and abandoned at various checkpoints, like runners who gave up mid-marathon and just sat down on the curb.
There’s a biography of a jazz musician stopped at page 43. A philosophy book marked at page 78. A mystery novel that lost me somewhere around chapter three. Each one represents a moment when I thought, “Tomorrow, I’ll continue.” Tomorrow came. I bought another book instead.
My friend Astrid finished War and Peace in two weeks while working full-time and training for a marathon. I can’t finish a 200-page memoir with a lot of free time and every technological advantage. Something is fundamentally wrong in our generation.
We blame phones, obviously. Easy target. But that’s not quite it.
I started tracking my reading habits last month. Not with an app or anything fancy, just a notebook where I’d write down every time I picked up a book and every time I put it down. The pattern became clear within days.
I never stopped reading because I was bored. I stopped reading because I felt guilty.
Guilty that I should be working instead. Guilty that I should be learning something more practical. Guilty that sitting still with a book felt like wasting time when there were emails to answer, posts to write, skills to acquire, networks to build, and money to earn.
Reading became a luxury I couldn’t justify, even to myself.
My neighbor Ottilia finishes two books a week. I asked her secret. She said she reads terrible books on purpose. Romance novels with predictable plots. Mysteries where you can guess the killer by page 30. Sci-fi that takes zero brain power to process.
“If I read books that matter,” she explained, “I feel pressure to remember everything. To have smart thoughts about them. To finish them properly. But if I read trash? Pure pleasure. No stakes. I actually finish them.”
This hit different. Have we turned reading into homework? Into self-improvement. Into performance art for our social media feeds. “Look at this profound book I’m reading” while the bookmark hasn’t moved in three months.
When did we stop reading for joy and start reading for credentials?
Two months ago, I met a guy named Henrik on a train. He’s 68 and recently retired. I noticed he was reading an actual physical book, completely absorbed. No phone in sight. No laptop nearby. Just a man and a book, existing in the same space, like a snowman.
I watched him for a bit before interrupting. He was so absorbed he didn’t notice me sitting across from him. When he finally looked up, I asked what made him different. How could he still read like that?
“I’m not trying to become anything,” he said. “You’re all still trying to become something. That’s the difference.”
The point landed like a punch. Every book I pick up comes with an agenda. I’m reading to become smarter, wiser, more cultured, more successful. I’m reading to transform myself into someone better. Someone more valuable.
Henrik? He was just reading because the story was interesting. That’s it. No hidden purpose. No self-improvement project. Just the simple act of being present with words on a page.
We’ve optimization-ed ourselves out of finishing things.
Think about it: we can’t finish books, but we can finish Twitter threads just fine. We can scroll for hours. We can binge-watch entire seasons in a weekend. The attention span excuse doesn’t hold water.
The real issue? We’ve lost permission to do things without purpose. Without productivity. Without measurable outcomes.
Reading a book doesn’t produce anything. It doesn’t advance your career. It won’t get you promoted. It’s not content for your brand. It’s just you, alone, existing with someone else’s thoughts for a few hours.
And somehow, that became unacceptable.
I’m not going to tell you to delete your phone or quit social media or join a reading challenge. Those solutions miss the point entirely. They’re just more goals, more pressure, more becoming.
What if the solution was simpler? What if we just admitted that reading isn’t a virtue project or a personal development plan? It’s just reading. Sometimes you finish the book. Sometimes you don’t. And both are fine.
My goal this year isn’t to finish more books. It’s to stop feeling guilty about the ones I don’t finish. To pick them up without pressure. To put them down without shame.
To read like Henrik does: without purpose, without agenda, without trying to become anything at all.
Just being present with words on a page. That’s enough. That’s always been enough.
This is the foundation for me this year, too. Make art for the sole purpose of making it. Read books just to read them.
Right on. I’ve adopted the same philosophy to my writing. At times, I try to write like Saunders or Sedaris to be taken seriously, then I realize what’s the point if I’m not having fun.