Is Reading a Hobby?

SHORT ANSWER: No, reading by itself is not a hobby.  It’s a leisure activity.  If you’re an avid reader and you’re mad at my answer, blame Merriam-Webster for its definition of the word ‘hobby,’ not me.

LONGWINDED ANSWER:

This is one of those dumb arguments that I allowed myself to get sucked into when I was in high school.  It was a dumb argument because I lost the argument, and the point probably doesn’t matter all that much.  I think it hurt my ego more than anything.  I lost an argument about reading books to somebody who didn’t even like reading books that much.

Up to that point in my life, I had just assumed that reading was a hobby.  I had read a lot of books growing up, and I collected comic books, and I also had accumulated a decent library of cheap paperback novels from used book stores.  I just thought of reading as a hobby because that’s what I did in my spare time, but my friend Eric disagreed.

Eric was one of those guys who could read books but chose not to because he had other stuff that he wanted to do.  He helped on home building construction crews, and he worked on cars, and he got drunk and got laid on a regular basis.  When he wasn’t doing any of that, he’d read the occasional Louis L’Amour western paperback, but that was about it.  And Eric thought that I was wasting prime high school years by reading too much and not living life to its fullest.

“If reading is a hobby,” my friend Eric said, “then how come the hobby shop doesn’t have any books?”

To be fair, the hobby shop did have a few books, but they were books about hobbies.  They weren’t the cheap paperback novels that I liked to read and collect.

Everything in the hobby shop was about making something or achieving a goal.  All I did by reading, my friend said, was sit there. To him, it wasn’t any better than watching television, and watching television wasn’t a hobby. Even I agreed with that.

I was kind of pissed.  I liked Eric.  He was fun to hang out with.  We were good for each other because he’d get me into a little bit of trouble, but at the same time I’d keep him out of some trouble too.  Still, I wondered who the hell made him the arbiter of what was a hobby and what wasn’t a hobby.  When I asked him (I probably phrased things more diplomatically), he pointed out to me the dictionary’s definition of the word ‘hobby.’

I don’t have the dictionary we used back in 1983(?) when this argument took place, but it was (probably) something like the current Merriam Webster definition:

Eric pointed out that a key word in hobby’s definition was ‘pursuit.’  A hobby wasn’t just an activity.  If you’re pursuing something, it’s a goal or achievement that you’re trying to reach.  If I’m reading just for the sake of reading, there’s no real ‘pursuit.’ It’s not as passive as watching tv, maybe, but it’s still passive enough to be only a leisure activity.

When I consider the word ‘pursuit,’ the examples of hobbies in the above definition make sense to me.  When you’re writing, you’re creating something that hadn’t existed before.  The same is true with gardening.  Bird watching sounds passive, but bird watchers usually aren’t just staring at birds and zoning out like they’re staring at their phone screens; bird watchers are usually categorizing birds and identifying patterns and learning about birds in general, and that learning is the pursuit.

So what about the word ‘pursuit’?

My memory isn’t the best, but I don’t think we looked up the word ‘pursue’ or ‘pursuit.’ I think that I conceded the point that, based on the dictionary’s definition, a hobby should have some kind of accomplishment or goal. Eric thought that finishing a book was no better than watching a tv show to the end, and I can kind of see that. Reading requires more focus and effort than watching, but I wasn’t sure that finishing a book was enough of an accomplishment to make it more than a leisure activity. At the same time, reading was still a great leisure activity. If it’s not technically a hobby, who cares?

Like I said earlier, it was a stupid thing to argue about.

When I pointed out that I drew my own comic books and that I used both comics and books as references for pictures and story ideas, he agreed that now reading became part of a hobby because  I was using them to create something.  When I pointed out that I was collecting all the books and comics that I had bought and read, then he said that collection was the hobby. At the time, I was kind of offended that he thought reading by itself wasn’t a hobby, and my brain scrambled out anything to justify the time that I had spent on reading for its own sake.

But now? Who cares?

Avid readers might disagree with Eric (and now with me), but, again, I don’t care because this isn’t something that is worth arguing about.  I don’t think any less of reading than readers who think reading is a hobby do.  I still will continue reading just as much, and if I slow down or stop it will be because of other reasons not because it isn’t a hobby.  If you believe reading is a hobby, you don’t have to insult me or call me ‘sad’ just because I disagree with you on this.  If anything, you’d be ‘sad’ for getting emotionally involved in such a stoopid argument.

Reading by itself might not be a hobby, but it’s still awesome, and it’s still worth doing. If you’re reading for pleasure only, I don’t think that you need to change anything because of what some random schmuck like me on the internet thinks.  The difference between a hobby and a leisure activity is a ‘who cares?’ type of difference, and Eric and I and Merriam-Webster could be wrong. 

Besides, who the heck made Merriam-Webster the arbiter of the definition of ‘hobby’ anyway?

*****

Enough about me and my (and Eric’s) opinion! What do you think?  Is reading by itself a hobby? Is this question worth getting emotionally invested in? Does the word ‘pursuit’ change the meaning of the word ‘hobby’ for you?  Show that you can handle disagreement maturely by leaving a comment below!

*****

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