Reading dense literature is not an easy task.

Some books will point a finger at you. They will talk about you, even if you pretend it’s about someone else.

I started this year with a literary project in mind. I would read one chapter per month from Jordan Peterson’s book Beyond Order. If I could read a chapter in less than 30 days, I would read it again and again until the turning of the current month. That was a simple plan to “make things stick” in my mind.

Little did I know what the future held for me in a few days’ time.

Then I also selected two other books to read: On Writing Well by William Zinsser and How to Live by Derek Sivers, which I started reading them in December.

As of today I changed my plans. I realized very quickly that all those books “talk”, in a way, to the reader. They suggest actions and behavior. At times, they point a finger directly at the reader.

And I don’t want that. Not now.

So I stepped back to novels and autobiographies, respectively.

I will start the year by reading Walden and Dune Messiah, both books I have read before, but I will read again for pure pleasure.

I switched from non-fiction to fiction. Of course, Walden is an autobiography thus non-fiction, but when I see the two stacks of books, I see one stack with no fiction at all and another that’s 50% fiction.

Fiction — especially science fiction like Dune — is awesome and I feel “spoiled” by it in a good sense. Spoiled by its grandiosity and the way it forces the reader to abandon their world and land somewhere else.

In science fiction, the book is not pointing fingers at you, but to above and beyond reader’s imagination.

“Hey, you. Look at that! Isn’t it amazing?”