I remember a time when I didn’t read for enjoyment, but for validation. I picked up books not because I was drawn to them, but because everyone else seemed to be reading them. Somewhere along the way, reading stopped being personal, and that’s when it became performative.

It would be a lie to say I didn’t enjoy reading at all. I did, but I wasn’t reading what I actually loved.

Unbeknownst to me, a social community dedicated solely to book discussions, of which I was a member, started shaping my reading choices. Suddenly, my “to-be-read” list was overflowing with books I hadn’t even questioned. If everyone was reading classics, I just had to read them too, not because I enjoyed them, but because these were the books that “everyone should read before they die”.

And when I didn’t enjoy them, I started questioning it. Not the books, no, I started questioning myself. I started wondering if I was missing something obvious, perhaps a deeper layer of understanding and meaning that everyone else seemed to find so effortlessly.

Slowly, I began to feel like maybe I wasn’t a true “bookworm” after all.

Are you reading because you love books — or because everyone else is reading them?

I’d scroll through people dissecting and recommending literary classics or “dark romance” books and feel strangely inadequate, as if I were listening to a conversation I couldn’t quite follow. If I didn’t connect to a popular book, I felt that I was at fault for not understanding the depth and artistry in it.

And the strange part is, I did enjoy reading. Just not always the books that were considered intellectually superior or widely praised. But somewhere in my head, I started linking them with a kind of status. Like reading them would make me seem more put-together, more interesting… maybe even cooler.

That started to feel exhausting. I was spending more time trying to ‘perform’ as a reader than actually reading. And at some point, I realised that no amount of external validation could ever really alter how a book felt to me in the moment.

So I let it ease. I began to wonder if I liked a book or not, and stopped trying to turn every book into a reflection of who I should be.

I simply read. Some things resonated, others didn’t, but that truly didn’t matter as long as I enjoyed what I read. I stopped trying to rationalise or intellectualise whatever appealed to me.

And then, slowly, reading became fun again.

Published in Dawn, Young World, August 29th, 2026