Uninteresting books as eye-openers

Have you ever read a book that “should” be right up your alley, but it wasn’t? You find it dry and too detailed, yes, simply boring. But in the end you realise that it’s not the book that is at fault – it is you. Or rather, your lack of interest in this area.

This recently happened to me. I had a very hard time getting through the second half of the book (but I did it of course, true to my almost autistic need to “close” things). I thought it was way too detailed. But after a while I realised that I would have wanted all those details if it was a subject that truly interested me.

This is a good realisation. Sometimes we’re too stuck to our self-images. We might have had an interest for many years, been active in certain movements, and so on. But never really bloomed in them, always taking part on the sidelines. Well, reading a really “boring” book on the subject might be the eye-opener we need. It was for me. I’m still very sympathetic to the causes, it’s just that I’ve admitted to myself that I, to be very honest, don’t care about them. There I said it.

So this will be the last book on this subject for me, and that feels like a relief. When one area goes, another comes. Interests change over a lifetime. But we can’t be tuned in to the exact level of interest at every particular point in time. Instead, we stop to gauge the interest levels every once in a while, and that’s what this book forced me to do.

So yes, it’s a relief, and it’s a good feeling to delve even deeper in the area that truly interests me.