Read Different

There is no right way to go about deciding what you read but…

I have avoided, very lightly engaged, or dodged if you will, many popular books, “classics”, and texts some might consider “important” to have read.

Speaking directly to writers, I want to reinforce my belief that it’s important for writers to read diversely and not consume precisely the same materials. This is not just because we may need to memorize important works in the event of a Black Mirror style dystopia that mixes a bit of Fahrenheit 451 with Anna Akhmatova’s real life… Rather, it’s because if artists all consume the same content, then they are likely to create very similar output. In the vein of “garbage in, garbage out” there is a fear of “too much of the same in, too much of the same out”.