Why Exactly Are Books so Important?
One of the best takes on why books matter comes from a literature professor who watched her country lose the ability to read freely.
For many, outrage over book bans comes naturally. The idea that a small group of people could prevent another one from accessing knowledge and ideas is abhorrent. Book bans are especially offensive when a few adults make choices about the public availability of knowledge for all a community’s children.
But instinctive outrage, even if it’s correct, allows us to forget why we feel the rage. Azar Nafisi’s book, Read Dangerously, is a reminder of why books are so important for everyone to protect.
Nafisi published her memoir about living through the Islamic Revolution in 1979, secretly teaching literature at her home, then moving to the United States in 2003. Reading Lolita in Iran became a bestseller in part because of the moving descriptions of how literature changed the way her students thought about what was going on around them. Her female students saw their lives stolen from them in Humbert Humbert’s theft of Lolita’s childhood.
Nafisi published Read Dangerously in 2022, almost two decades later to urge Americans to open themselves to those same transformational conversations.
The Danger of Indifference
The first step in protecting books is to care about them. That doesn’t just mean being engaged in school board fights or opposing state book bans — although those are important as well. We also have to take responsibility for reading them. In her introduction, Nafisi writes:
“In Iran, like all totalitarian states, the regime pays too much attention to poets and writers, harassing, jailing, and even killing them. The problem in America is that too little attention is paid to them…In the United States, it is mainly we, the people, who are the problem; we who take the existence of challenging literature for granted, or see reading as solely a comfort, seeking out only texts that confirm our presuppositions and prejudices. Perhaps for us, the very idea of change is dangerous, and what we avoid is reading dangerously.”
American reading habits have been worsening for decades. A 2022 Gallup survey found that Americans read fewer books each year. The largest decline came from college students. An October 2024 Atlantic article reported ivy league professors who increasingly met students who’d never read a book cover-to-cover in high school.
Reading a book isn’t enough, though. We have to be willing to engage with ideas that are unfamiliar to us, especially literature that we may find offensive. That attitude can extend to non-fiction. American liberals could pick up a copy of The Conservative Sensability, and conservatives could read Captain Sund’s memoir, Courage Under Fire, which covers his time as Capitol Police Chief during the January 6 attack.
This isn’t a call to stop working to read War and Peace, but not being hunted for what we read is a privilege. Failing to exercise it is a tragedy. It’s certainly not a virtue.
Totalitarianism and Comfort
“The most seductive aspect of a totalitarian society is the security it offers. The truth is uncomfortable, and a dictator promises an abdication of responsibility from it.”
Nafisi is clear-eyed about the appeal that a strongman holds for people, including people who style themselves as intellectuals. Authoritarian propaganda scrubs nuance from the world and divides it into two groups: us and them.
It’s much easier to borrow a worldview than to think through the world’s complexities. How many Democrats or Republicans can identify the differences within the opposing party? Could a Democrat name the differences between Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, and Nikki Haley? Are there many Republicans who can tell the difference between Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Elizabeth Warren?
Many of us have probably swallowed what our favored partisans have told us about the political figures we hate the most. The level of detail contained in books is a solution to our inability to grapple with nuance, and it’s not limited to politics. Literature can help us look at our values and worldviews differently. Exploring the different worldviews is how authors show their readers how values they hold dear play out in the real world — both for better and for worse.
As book bans become more common and the war on literature intensifies, Read Dangerously is a call to action. Protesting book bans isn’t enough. We have to care enough to read again.