An Epiphany About Reading
by admin | May 15, 2026 8:27 am
I have been muddling my way through an interesting but fairly dense book titled Invisible Rulers, by Renée DiResta. To quote the book jacket, she “reveals how a virtual rumor mill of niche propagandists increasingly shapes public opinion.” She makes her case convincingly.
Trouble is, once that point has been made, according to my Kindle, I am only one-third of the way through the book, and I am losing interest. I don’t know if that says something about the author’s ability to hold my interest or about my inability to pay attention over the long term. Maybe both? Regardless, I intend to finish it.
At the same time, I am reading History of the Rain by Niall Williams, a terrific Irish novelist. I am also reading this book slowly, but it’s different. I savor every sentence of this novel, which is both hilarious and heartbreaking. I don’t want it to end, even though a baker’s dozen of books is stacked on my to-read chair, an antique wooden office chair that came out of the Garrison News several decades ago.
A small stack of unread magazines sits on the built-in bookshelves behind my desk. Magazines I am currently reading are in the bathroom and on the chair next to where I eat. I use every possible moment to try to stay caught up with the nine magazines I subscribe to. At times, I feel pressured to reduce the stack. The pressure is purely self-inflicted. I feel guilty not reading magazines for which I have shelled out as much as $150 a year — The New Yorker — which, if I could have only one subscription, would be that one. If I could pick two, Atlantic would be the other.
I recently had an epiphany: I don’t have to read every magazine cover to cover. I don’t have to finish every book I start if it doesn’t hold my interest. I already skip the poetry and fiction in both The New Yorker and The Atlantic. After more than 70 years on this planet, I am giving myself permission to skip or skim articles that don’t interest me or whose gist I already understand. There are other books and magazine articles to read. Or not.
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A major reason this epiphany occurred is that the time I can spend reading is about to be considerably reduced because, once again, I am taking on a long-delayed project to expand my nearly 40-year-old master’s thesis into a book. Its original title: Politics, Polemics & Murder: A History of the San Augustine Red-Lander, 1838-1847. That’s a bit clunky; it may change in the months to come.
I have an incentive because I am taking up a project begun in 2020, when we were in pandemic lockdown. I recently applied for and received a $2,000 research fellowship from the Portal to Texas History at the University of North Texas. As its website states, the Portal is a gateway to rare, historical, and primary source materials from or about Texas. One of its key assets is its Texas Digital Newspaper Program, which has digitized and made searchable 2,064 newspaper titles to date, including the The Red-Lander and many of its contemporaries during the Republic of Texas. When it gets too hot to mow or do other hobby farm chores, I will be working on that project.
As I told my brothers when I found out about the fellowship, “Now I have to write the damn thing.” I look forward to getting started in the next few days and am grateful for the research fellowship.
Reading for pleasure and to learn will always be a key part of my life. I just won’t be as patient with books or articles I might have slogged through before. As Trisha Yearwood sang: There is less in the windshield than I’ve got in my rearview.
Source URL: https://garyborders.com/pages/an-epiphany-about-reading/