Reading

I’m not sure that anyone, myself included, really needs this post. On the other hand, I read a thing about re-reading and I want to write about *that* but keep getting hung up on reading. So I wanted to write a little bit about how I think differently about reading than I used to.

This is a story about I went from feeling like I should read more to feeling happy with — and about — reading. I use the word should too much and I’m trying to “stop shoulding all over myself”, as a therapist once said. I spent a long time feeling like “I should read more” and now I read a lot and really enjoy it.

I’ve written about reading on the blog before. I had two different projects to read books, Project 3 to read 25 books in 52 weeks and Project 15 to read 12 books in 21 weeks. I’ve also posted quite a few different notes on the things I read or lists of the things I read and from 2017 to 2022 I posted one word reviews of books. Reading more or better has been a regular resolution in my year end posts.

Like I said, I’m not sure I needed to write this. I like reading, so I read a lot. This is probably all we need, but I will say that beyond liking to read I’ve also given myself permission to read what I like and to ignore what I don’t like. That lets me enjoy the bits of books that I think are really good and if a book has bits I don’t like, I kind of don’t care.

Sometimes that means I jump to the end of the chapter if a confrontation in a book bugs me, or I might hit the skip ahead  button. Sometimes that means speed reading, or setting the speed on an audiobook up to 2x (or 3x) if I decide I don’t want to spend that long with a book — or if the book is written by Asimov, but I guess I repeat myself.

I’ve also given myself permission to stop reading books. Some books aren’t the right book for you to read right now and in the past I tended to slog through, refusing to start the next book until I finished this thing I didn’t want to read. The result was I used to … not read as much. Accepting that I can read for the love of reading alone has been immensely freeing and now when I hit a book that’s not the right book for right now I can move on.

So now I find I can enjoy the parts of books that are good. I can enjoy the writing or the characterization or the setting, even if I don’t love the other parts. I often everything now-a-days, but I have permission to step out whenever I want.

So person on Mastodon who replied to my year end post on reading, “Wow, you read a lot of books.” You didn’t ask, but that’s how I read so much. I enjoy it, I skip the bad parts and I listen to Isaac Asimov at about 3x speed.

If you were to ask me — and I’m aware that you haven’t — I would say if you want to read more, do it because you think it’s fun. Read the books you want to read, don’t worry about what’s good, skip the parts you don’t like, you can always come back later. Put down books you don’t like or that you’re not interested in. Maybe find a couple friends who read a lot as well (thanks friends on Goodreads) and figure out which of the books they like that you’ll like.

Anyway, I think reading more, and more happily, has been a big step forward in my overall mental health and I’m glad to be doing it.

Books are good. (Wow I really could have written a shorter post.)