A few months ago, I opened my Threads feed to find a virtual bloodbath of sorts. Post after post, people expressed their anger, hurt, and bewilderment about a controversial “books I DNFed” (did not finish) post shared on Bookstagram.

This type of online book people drama is far from unusual. In fact, it’s almost daily. But this controversy was particularly interesting (and relevant) to me. A Christian bookstagrammer had ended up in a large portion of the book community’s furious intellectual clutches for a reason many people had never seen. She revealed why she DNFed each book, and her reasons for two of the books caught the community’s attention and ire. The reason? Those books included gay characters in the storyline.

When I said “many people had never seen” DNF reasons like hers, I wasn’t talking about myself. I’m intimately familiar with her worldview and her world, the branch of Christianity she’s coming from. In some ways, I used to live there, and I used to think their branch was not merely a branch but the whole tree. Then I read more books (including the entire Bible a few times), which took my tree and its limitations and placed them in a deep forest that held church history, theological variance, and the mystery of God.

I didn’t add to the fire that day, even though part of me wanted to chime in with a #NotAllChristians take. The other half of me thought that would be about as helpful as #NotAllMen in conversations about misogyny and violence against women. (Plus, another bookstagrammer named Rachel had it covered, and it turned out a lot of people appreciated the sentiment.)

But this isn’t an article about religious dogmatism. I brought up this book world controversy because of what it brought up in me. It was a reminder of why some fundamentalist parents don’t want their children to go to college, why so many bury their heads in the sand and insist reading is just for fun and not a political act, and why certain people want certain books banned: a lot of bigotry has met its end within the pages of a book.

I read, buy, and borrow books for fun, but fun isn’t my only reason. Here are the rest of them.

Reading

In the first room of our house (where all my books live), there’s a flag that says, “Books change your mind.” It’s a portion of this Toni Morrison quote:

“Books are a form of political action. Books are knowledge. Books are reflection. Books change your mind.”

Books change our minds quite literally. Research has shown that reading (particularly fiction) can reduce prejudice and increase empathy and emotional intelligence. It’s been proven to have other benefits like healthy escapism, longer lives, stronger memory, lower stress, and better sleep quality, too.

But one of the best things reading has given me is the ability to step into someone else’s story and learn something from it—even if I’ve never been (and will likely never be) in their shoes or don’t agree with all of their decisions.

The point of reading isn’t always to agree and affirm; it’s to open our minds to experiences outside of our own and help us consider other perspectives. As Azar Nafisi wrote in Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books:

“You don't read Gatsby, I said, to learn whether adultery is good or bad but to learn about how complicated issues such as adultery and fidelity and marriage are. A great novel heightens your senses and sensitivity to the complexities of life and of individuals, and prevents you from the self-righteousness that sees morality in fixed formulas about good and evil.”

There are reasonable limits to this, but only reading books by people who are already “on our side” doesn’t help us learn and grow. On the contrary, reading about something or someone we’re unknowledgeable about or uncomfortable with expands the mind. It helps us become more understanding of others’ circumstances and beliefs—and even consider that some of our assumptions and long-held stances may be wrong.

For all of the reasons mentioned above and then some, reading brings more to our lives (and our brains) than simply a good time. If reading had no power, there wouldn’t have been so many people trying to restrict access to it throughout history and today.

We all have the freedom to read (or not read) whatever we want, but our reasons for doing so matter. I believe that, deep down, those like the aforementioned bookstagrammer know the power of reading and fear that giving an inch of empathy to a fictional character from one of their outgroups might call their beliefs into question in a way they’re afraid to risk.

They may be afraid that reading outside of their worldview will normalize something or someone in their mind that they’ve worked hard to categorize as an “issue.” It’s harder to hate someone up close, and who wants to read a story where they’re the bad guy?

I have some grace for this. No one wants to “have [their] certainties blown to hell,” as Sarah Bessey wrote in my favorite book of the year last year. Many of us don’t want to risk being wrong, and reading always presents that risk. 

Why else would believing that being gay is wrong mean someone can’t read a book with a gay character when they exist in a society alongside gay people? And have gay people in their family? And are otherwise forced to acknowledge their existence? And can read books with characters they disagree with in other ways? And have successfully maintained their convictions despite knowing that the people they disagree with exist outside the pages of books?

What are they afraid is going to happen? I think we know—it’s the same thing that happened in the Human Library program, where participants were “readers” who selected a “book” (a person from a stigmatized group) to “read” (talk to for 20+ minutes). Their fears, stereotypes, and prejudices started to melt away.

I think they’re afraid that books will change their mind.

Buying

One of the most common questions I get when someone sees how many books I own is, “Have you actually read all of these?”

Well, no, and having read them all isn’t the point. I like to think I eventually will, but I’m also okay with surrounding myself with more books than I’ll ever have time to read. Such is the life of a book person. My personal library expands not because I’ve read every book I’ve bought but because the library itself brings me comfort, joy, and pre-selected options for my next read.

A good number of my books are from thrift stores, so I’m not exactly sitting on a goldmine. But whether I’m buying from a Goodwill or a local independent bookstore, buying books is also a way for me to invest in authors and the book community at large. 

By doing my small part, I’m attempting to loosen the grip Amazon has over the publishing industry and soften its impact on physical bookstores. In a devastating blow to anyone like me who loves bookstores and all the ways they improve communities, Amazon intentionally sells books at a loss in order to drive independent bookstores out of business. 

Sadly, their strategy has worked: there was a 43% drop in bookstores five years after Amazon’s first year in business. Indie bookstores’ recent comeback is evidence that many readers are trying not to give in to Amazon’s cheap books ploy, but fighting them (especially in this economy) is an uphill battle. And that’s why I buy.

If I can do anything to help keep independent bookstores in communities, I’ll do it, even if it means paying a few more dollars for a book. Understandably, not everyone can swing that financially, but that’s where community comes in. There’s always the library.

Borrowing

School libraries have been put through the wringer with a loud minority calling for book bans the past few years, and now the Trump administration wants to cut funding for public libraries and museums.

This has left many library users reeling and wondering what we can do to support our local branch. I’m trying to regularly check out books—even if I don’t get around to reading them all—to help show the government that people do use the library and that funding is necessary.

I also use my personal library to keep knowledge sharing and community care going. In addition to books I haven’t read, I keep books I’ve read and loved on my shelf in case a friend wants to borrow them—especially if they’re facing something hard and it’s a book that helped me get through a similar tough thing.

Books connect us to each other in remarkable ways. James Baldwin expressed this beautifully when he said:

 “You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, who had ever been alive.”

That’s why I borrow books and let people borrow books from me.

I haven’t been perfect in my book consumption habits, but borrowing a book I wanted in a hurry from a friend’s shelf has helped me resist the temptation to get it from Amazon in two days and give Bezos more money to put my favorite bookstores out of business.

I’ve browsed the library to get a hit of dopamine and left with a stack of free books instead of going shopping.

I’ve pulled books about grief, heartbreak, faith, health, transitions, and more off of my shelf for friends to borrow at a time they needed it.

This is the type of community and connection that reading brings to our lives. Reading books, talking about books, buying books, getting books signed by our favorite authors, lending out books—it all puts us into someone else’s orbit and makes us a part of a larger, mind-opening story.

So when we consider the point of reading, we all have our reasons for reading what we read (or won’t read), buying what we buy, and borrowing from whomever. But there’s a truth I’d argue is universal: literacy opens doors and minds. Literacy is a force that can shape us—not just as children learning how to read but as adults learning how to relate to each other. 

What we choose to read and what we refuse to read makes us who we are. When we embrace reading with minds wide open, use it to think more deeply and critically, and allow it to place us in someone else’s shoes for a few pages, what it does within us has the ability to change our minds, hearts, and communities. And, like Bookstagram posts that don’t intend to go viral, that change—which I hope is a positive one—can make its way around the world.