My favorite thing about Silent Book Club is the silent part. I love the quiet of reading and the hush of libraries. I do not like loud noises. I hate fireworks and Harley Davidsons and power saws and blenders. I find comfort and solace in silence, but all of us are wired differently.
Some folks need background noise to keep them company. Music helps them get work done. White noise machines help them sleep. A TV on in another room will make them feel less alone. To me, all of those scenarios sound painfully distracting. And ohmygod don’t get me started on knuckles cracking. I can barely type the words. If I went fishing for a diagnosis, I’m sure I could find one for my particular brand of sensory overload, but generalized anxiety disorder is a pretty good catch-all.
The last five years have not been kind to us anxious types. Things were already getting tense with climate change, income inequality, and the rise of fascism before Covid-19 even landed. The World Health Organization reported that global prevalence of anxiety and depression increased by 25% in the first year of the pandemic. And that number doesn’t even factor in the January 6th insurrection, the Russian invasion of Ukraine, global supply chain shortages, the Western drought, and looming recession. Oh hey! Look at me spiraling! Classic anxiety disorder.
When news dropped that Elon Musk was going to buy Twitter and get rid of content moderation in the name of “free speech,” my first instinct was to flee to the nearest hole large enough to crawl into. Handing the world’s loudest megaphone to the world’s biggest internet troll because he’s the world’s richest man seems like, I don’t know, a bad idea for humanity?
I had to quit Twitter because it was too noisy. In recent years, I occasionally checked in on the platform but largely avoided spending much time there. I know my weakness for outrage. My penchant for self-righteousness is my biggest character flaw. But after January 6th, I got sucked back in. After two weeks of rage scrolling and furious retweets and shouting into the void, my hair started falling out from the stress. I had an addict’s reckoning: there is no such thing as moderation for me when it comes to Twitter.
The modern world is a horror show of sensory overload. We are inundated with more information than our brains can process. When your brain is overwhelmed, it enters into a crisis response—fight, flight, or freeze. We feel unsafe. In a constant reactionary state, we are not in control. Emotions short circuit logical thought processes, and we start mistaking beliefs for truths.
It’s human nature to try and impose order on chaos. The parents bringing pitchforks to school board meetings are literally out of control. When they shout loud enough to get 1,145 books banned, they feel like they are restoring order to a world that is spinning off its axis. (Nevermind the mind-boggling hypocrisy of a political party that censors books while screaming about freedom.) As Margaret Atwood recently wrote, chaos and tyranny are two sides of the same coin: “Get yourself a dictator, and he’ll clear up the chaos.”
So how do we get out of this mess? Turn down the volume on all the noise. Read more, react less. Cancel outrage culture. Embrace silence, but speak out against injustice. Stand up for librarians and educators. Fight for students to have access to more resources, not fewer. Put down your phone and pick up a book. And for the love of god, don’t let me anywhere near Twitter if Elon takes over.
Silently yours,
guinevere
Edited by noted food writer Alicia Kennedy, this free, 4-week newsletter series examines sustainable eating from all angles. Subscribe to Prism now.
Bookmarks
Book-related links and other good stuff online
Banned in the USA: Rising school book bans threaten free expression PEN America
Brooklyn Public Library offers all US teens access to banned books BookRiot
Free speech is not the problem at universities—media reporting is Slate
What’s happening with the literary community in Ukraine? LitHub
Russian writers must fight back against totalitarianism The New York Times
New poetry from Ukraine LitHub
Silence is golden Graduate Hotels
Is artificial intelligence the next Great American Author? The New York Times
Margaret Atwood: Beliefs are not truths The Atlantic
How Barnes & Noble went from villain to hero The New York Times
Jennifer Egan: Twitter doesn’t make me feel optimistic about human nature The Guardian
Overheard on Twitter:
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Books we loved this month
The Candy House, by Jennifer Egan
Sea of Tranquility, by Emily St. John Mandel
Time is a Mother, by Ocean Vuong
Bomb Shelter, by Mary Laura Philpott
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