I love reading. As a child, I would carry a book with me everywhere. I haven’t stopped, either, though the books are more often in digital audio form these days.

Having children has raised a question for me, though. My daughter loves to read. On many summer days, she would get up, grab her Kindle, and read throughout the day, never even changing her clothes. If we didn’t step in, she might have spent every summer day this way.

Part of me didn’t want to step in. Reading is always good, right?

But a more reasonable part of me points out that of course it isn’t. The value of reading, like any activity, depends on what you get out of it and what else you do with that time.

What you get out of it

There are at least three components to what you get out of reading: quality of writing, subject matter, and the reader’s engagement.

Quality

I struggle to read poor writing, though, unsurprisingly, my bar for what is worth reading differs from others. I love Brandon Sanderson, but a friend of mine can’t stand him because Sanderson’s dialogue pulls my friend out of the book. Someone else I know read a novel using stories from the Book of Mormon as their basis. She loved them, but I thought the writing was bad enough that I couldn’t get through the first chapter.

There are things that can make up for bad writing. I enjoy reading Alistair Reynolds. He was a scientist for years and it shows. His writing is technical, dense, and often sacrifices narrative flow in favor of technical descriptions of physical processes. But the world he evokes is fascinating to me – exploring the outer limits of technology and what it means to be human. I will struggle through the writing because what I get out of it is worth it.

Subject matter

Genre divides the book world, though I am drawn to those readers and writers who prefer reading broadly.

A long-standing division in the book world is between literary fiction and genre fiction – in which genre fiction is whatever literary fiction writers and readers deem unworthy to be included in their lofty ranks (because there are definitely genre works that make it into literary fiction reading lists). While I think that “literary” captures something real, it is ephemeral and not obviously superior to other types of books. I think one of its main purposes is to help publishers market boring books to readers who would rather read something fun.

I’m not a fan of the literary/genre fiction division. There is another divide that is not just marketing but reflects actual differences in the purpose and crafting of the book–the fiction/non-fiction divide. It’s very important that we know whether Rage contains actual interviews with Donald Trump. It is also helpful to know that a contemporary thriller is not an actual account of an attempted presidential assassination.

Of course, sometimes this line can become blurry. I read a book about an Italian man’s experience during World War II which claimed to be non-fiction, but upon inspection, played a little loose with the facts. Much of the book was unverifiable and relied on the interviews the author had with this man at the end of his life. But a book that blurs the lines only confirms the importance of this division. If we want to understand World War II better, it is helpful to know which books strive to convey what happened—Unbroken—compared to those written to convey ideas inspired by this catastrophic series of events—The Book Thief.

I have another friend who doesn’t read fiction. To him, reading about real people and real events is more valuable than reading about fiction. I was listening to a history podcast in which the hosts discussed historical fiction. They get frustrated when they couldn’t tell what was real and what was fiction.

The value of subject matter is certainly subjective. What is worth reading depends on who is doing the reading. I probably consume more writing books than the average reader but I also consume more law books than the average writer. Fiction and non-fiction are valuable for understanding the world. I try to read a non-fiction book for every fiction book, though if I do read two in a row, it’s almost always fiction.

Engagement

My engagement with books has changed since I started trying to write. I pay more attention to the craft of a book. While I have always had opinions about the quality of work (see above about the Book of Mormon novel), over time I’ve improved my ability to identify why a book is lower quality. I can begin to identify not just that a book I enjoyed had a cool magic system, but how the author developed that magic system through dialogue and description.

Finally, one way I try to engage with books is by discussing them with others, either online or in person. This helps me explore the ideas of the book more thoroughly. This is particularly helpful for me because I tend to have a rosy picture of a book immediately after reading it. Talking to someone else helps me identify flaws.

What else could you do with your time?

I studied economics in college. A key concept in economics is opportunity cost. I could spend two hours reading a book, but the opportunity cost is giving up the chores, time with family, or sleep that otherwise would fill that two hours. Whether a book is worth it depends not just on what I get out of the book. By that metric, I could argue that any book is worth my time. I think that I can get something positive out of any book. The question becomes, “Is what I got out of the book worth more than the other things I could have done with that time?”

As a parent of four, a home-owner, and an active member of my church, I often find myself doing things other than reading. So perhaps I need to ask myself occasionally, “was doing that more valuable than reading a book?”