There Is No Comfortable Reading Position

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily.

For the 10th year in a row, my New Year’s resolution is to read more books. Ideally, as I tend to tell myself during these protean early weeks of January, 2026 will be remembered for languorous evenings on the couch, tearing through the inventory of novels that crowd the modest capacity of my living-room shelves, perhaps with a tumbler of scotch resting on a coaster. I revel in the fantasy—I dream about finally cracking open A Confederacy of Dunces, or knocking out the last two entries of the Broken Earth trilogy, or making time for that Patti Smith memoir that I bought more than a decade ago. If I’m really feeling myself, I contemplate aiming even higher. Tolstoy? Pynchon? I mean, there’s also that copy of The Pale King that has been steadily yellowing on my coffee table for quite some time now.

And yet, I already know how this saga is going to end. The year will draw to a close with a piddling number of new entries to my Goodreads, hopelessly incongruous with the size of my bibliophilic ambitions. Ask me why I never seem to read as much as I like, and I could gesture toward the well-worn afflictions of modernity—ballooning screen time, addictive algorithms, frayed attention spans. But one of my fundamental issues with literature is far more prosaic. In fact, I think it’s much more common than anyone would like to admit. Why is it that no matter what I do, I can never get comfortable while reading a book?

Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about. This is a species-wide affliction. The first published novel in history is widely considered to be The Tale of Genji, a courtly drama written in the late 11th century by the Japanese noblewoman Murasaki Shikibu. A millennium since her wondrously mind-expanding invention, humanity has somehow yet to conceive an ergonomically sound way to consume the written word. I, like you, have lain flat on my back holding a novel aloft until my arms grow strained, fidgety, and unable to maintain equilibrium. I have also sat in an armchair, splaying the book open in my lap, until the severe angle stiffens my neck and reinforces the horrible truth that furniture was never meant to support the literary necessity to gaze downward. There is, of course, always the option to flip over to your stomach, allowing your elbows to dig into the mattress, carpet, or couch cushions. That works for a spell, until it becomes clear that your body is situated in a tedious, low-impact plank, while, in the pages below, Raskolnikov brandishes his axe and kills everyone in sight.

I cycle through all of these postures, over and over again, hoping to finally crack the code—unlocking the sublime Zen of the novel, the fabled joys of reading. When I put out the call to my friends and colleagues to see if they related to my plight, I quickly learned that all of us are languishing on this futile journey. Slate associate editor Bryan Lowder recalled that while leafing through a supremely unwieldy hardcover tome containing the collected Earth Sea novels, he was forced to stack three pillows against his headboard and another on his abdomen in order to remain sound of body while tracing the adventures of Sparrowhawk. My friend Laura Grasso—a costume designer, and a woman who recently finished The Brothers Karamazov—has developed a complicated anthropometrical schematic in which she props her entire body on the padded slope of a couch’s armrest, with the book balanced delicately in her eyeline. (“I try to go full diagonal,” she said. “That’s by far the most optimal approach.”) Others have developed a Stockholm syndrome–esque relationship with the agony of reading, interpreting the pain as a sign of virtue. Slate senior editor Tony Ho Tran said that he is of the opinion that he “needs to be a little uncomfortable” to concentrate on his literature. “Give me a weird wooden dining chair,” he proclaimed. “Give me a plastic seat on the train while I commute.”

... continue reading