Wanna buck social norms?
Adopt a radical, new lifestyle? Travel to lands of untold cerebral beauty?
Do you want to be a maverick, a renegade?
Read a book.
It’s one of the most counter-culture things you can do now. And I don’t mean scrolling through digitised bestsellers or slapping on headphones so authors can read to you instead.
Can we please fall back in love with turning actual pages? New (or worn) inky scents that escape from well-thumbed pages? As nose-pleasing as a lover’s skin.
Last year I read 24 novels. I don’t share this to chest beat or lord it over those of you who haven’t read a book since 2005.
Reading is my revolutionary act – especially when I do it in public.
I’m that person on your commute who makes a big show of pulling a fat book outta her bag – even when I don’t have a seat, even when I need to elbow someone to make this happen. And then I’ll turn the pages with a flamboyant rustle so hopefully even the tram driver can hear me starting a new chapter.
But alas. I’m very aware my one-woman crusade is futile, since I’ll never be louder than the chick conducting a desperately urgent, deafening Teams meeting on her phone opposite me.
We’re living in crazy times, friends.
In the 1960s, being a free-loving, weed-sucking, flower-strewn, dreadlocked hippie meant you defined the counterculture.
But in 2026, you’re sticking it to the bots when you have a library card.
© Phyllis Foundis 2026