"Krystof Reads Every Day"

In elementary school, each student in my class made a bookmark under the careful direction of our teacher. Were they each a unique artistic expression of the child who made it? No. They were very simple: just two columns going down, with spaces for a date and a signature.

We were to take these home every day, and our parents were to add the date and their signature when we read with them on that particular day. Then we brought the bookmark back to school to show the teacher that we had diligently practiced at home.

After a few weeks of this, my mom wrote “Krystof reads every day” on the bookmark, signed it, and never looked at it again. My teacher was amused by this, but what was she going to do? And so I showed her this bookmark every day, and every day she smiled and accepted it.

Minas Tirith on my mind
Minas Tirith on my mind

“Krystof reads every day”.

It was probably true, or at least close. My parents had a huge library that spanned most of our house growing up. There were books on huge shelves in all of the bedrooms, in my dad’s office, and in the living room. I genuinely thought we had a copy of all the books worth reading in the whole world. If someone at school recommended a specific book, I’d ask my mom, and I’d have it on my bed stand the same day or the next. If I didn’t have a specific book in mind, my mom would say she’d think about it and come back with something fun.

In 2001, the Fellowship of the Ring film came out, and from then on I wanted to get as much Tolkien as I could. The day I came back from the cinema I asked my mom for the book, and she handed it to me before nightfall. I loved it, of course, so when I finished it I asked her for the sequel, The Two Towers. Two days later, it still hadn’t materialized, so I went to my mom with great confusion. What was taking so long?

She said she couldn’t find it, and that we probably just didn’t have it. I was shocked. I guess we didn’t have all the books in the world, and not even all the books worth reading! I ended up borrowing the The Two Towers from a friend.

I read all of Tolkien’s books after that, including The Silmarillion (considered the mark of true Tolkien fans because it’s such a slog to get through), and then even the rarer Unfinished Tales.

In college I found Ernest Hemingway, and after reading A Farewell To Arms, I remember feeling angry at some of the English teachers in my past. Why had they kept Hemingway hidden from me? How could they feed us stuff like Wuthering Heights and stay mum about The Sun Also Rises? I simply could not comprehend it - and to this day I am puzzled that through all of high school and college not a single teacher had us read anything from Hemingway.

I do still read every day, just about. Before my daughter was born I read about 20-25 books per year; these days it’s down to about 12. About half of those are fiction, and half non-fiction.

I got a Kindle a couple of years ago, and that’s been transformative for my ability to take notes on what I’m reading, and to review and process those notes. I had really struggled with it before - taking notes always required another device, but with the Kindle it’s fast and easy. I wrote this script to process notes exported from the Kindle into a nicely formatted Markdown document, which makes it easy to add them to my second brain in Roam.

For books where I really want to solidify the takeaways for myself, I publish my cleaned up and re-organized book notes here on The Klog. You can find them in the archives.

I’ve tried books on tape, and they work ok for fiction for me, but for non-fiction I do still find the act of reading preferable. It is much easier to pause, re-read, reflect, and jot down notes that way, and I find that in aggregate that makes a big difference to my ability to get value out of the book.

What are the books that have made a big impact on your life?

Krystof Litomisky's Picture

About Krystof Litomisky

Krystof is an engineer, adventurer, and all-around good guy based in Los Angeles, California.

Los Angeles, California

Comments