How many books should we really read?
How many books should we really be reading? Is it ever enough?
I used to think the answer was simple: the more, the better. But then I read a chapter in A Simpler Life called How to Read Fewer Books — and it completely shifted how I think about reading. It reminded me that sometimes, fewer books can actually be more nourishing!
We often grow up believing that intelligence is measured by how widely we’ve read. The more books that line our shelves, the more wisdom and status we appear to possess. It can seem as though true insight is earned only after years spent working through an endless reading list — as if there’s no such thing as having read “enough.” In this mindset, every spare moment must be filled with another page, and the total number of books we complete over a lifetime becomes a kind of measure for our depth and maturity.
But the chapter How to Read Fewer Books from A Simpler Life offers a different perspective. Here’s what I took away from it:
Today, there’s a strong cultural push toward reading more and more. The publishing world and the media constantly present us with new releases, making it seem as though we’ll fall behind — or even be thought narrow-minded — if we don’t keep up with the latest prize-winners and must-reads. The result is often overflowing bookshelves and a nagging sense of guilt for not reading fast enough.
But it hasn’t always been this way. In earlier times, people weren’t expected to consume such a vast number of titles. Reading was considered deeply important, yes — but what mattered was not how many books you finished, but how fully you absorbed a few. Books were costly then, but the real value lay in revisiting and truly understanding selected works, rather than scattering one’s attention across an endless stream of new titles.
In modern times, we’ve moved far away from the older, simpler approach to reading. Instead, we’ve embraced a mindset that urges us to read without limits — as though the only worthy goal of reading is to know everything. It’s no longer about seeking calm, nurturing our spirit, or even cultivating virtue; it has become about chasing total knowledge. We read with the hope of understanding the whole of human existence — our history, our progress, even the vast story of the universe itself. It’s as if the more books we can consume, the closer we might come to holding the entirety of knowledge in our hands.
But this endless pursuit can also feel overwhelming — and perhaps even impossible. In trying to grasp everything, we risk missing the quiet, lasting value of truly absorbing just a few things well.
If we’re honest, this relentless approach to reading doesn’t always make us happier. Surrounded by endless books, we rarely give ourselves the chance to return to the ones we truly love. Instead, we carry a constant weight of feeling behind — less read than our peers, or less informed than the voices that set the standards of what’s “respectable.”
Perhaps it’s time to pause and ask, as Saint Jerome and other pre-modern thinkers once did: what am I reading for? And maybe, instead of striving to know everything, we can embrace a gentler purpose. Rather than chasing total knowledge, we could allow ourselves to seek only the wisdom that helps us live our own lives more fully. A new mantra could guide us: I read so I can learn to be content. Nothing more, nothing less.
With this more focused approach, the pressure to read endlessly begins to lift. We might find that a small shelf of carefully chosen books is more than enough, leaving us neither deprived nor lacking in nourishment. When our purpose is to read in order to be content, we no longer feel the need to chase every new release or keep pace with the publishing world’s constant cycle.
Instead, we can select the titles that truly matter to us — the ones that help us understand ourselves and our families more clearly, that guide us toward meaningful work, and that give us courage to pursue opportunities. We might keep a few books on love, friendship, sexuality, and health. Others could teach us how to travel well, practice gratitude, forgive, and find calm in difficult times. Some may help us face disappointment with resilience, and a few might gently prepare us for the inevitability of death.
When we carry these intentions with us, we realise we don’t need endless shelves to feel enriched. The clearer we are about why we read, the easier it becomes to form a close, lasting bond with just a handful of meaningful books. A library can be small and simple. Rather than always chasing something new, we can return to familiar pages, revisiting the lessons that matter most but that we so easily forget. In the end, being “well-read” isn’t about the sheer number of titles we’ve consumed, but about allowing a few carefully chosen works to shape how we live, how we love, and even how we face the end of life.
Remembering this feels strangely freeing — like permission to slow down, savour what truly resonates, and let a smaller number of books shape us more deeply.
Saba x