I’ve always loved reading. Or at the very least, I don’t remember a time when I didn’t love it. I have pretty specific (though likely nostalgia-tinted, at this point) memories of studying my picture books - especially the Berenstain Bears - in great detail. And then reading “Heidi” and noticing how very different the written story was to the Shirley Temple movie.
There was a lot of Christian lit in my young reading life, like Addie McCormick and the Cooper Kids, and various books I checked out from the church library (wow, that’s a flashback; whatever happened to the church library?). Then there was the library-library, which was literally across the street from us growing up: endless Boxcar children, the Betsy-Tacy series, Ramona Quimby, and so many others. And then there was my beauty book phase, where I checked out books on hair, nails, makeup, and all things cosmetic, reading each one (somehow) cover to cover.
I sadly fell out of reading for the joy of it for a while; going to university and studying “serious” books as a philosophy major made me feel like my reading always had to amount to something. But slowly, maybe a decade or so on, I started getting back into it. Reading for reading’s sake. Reading stupid and badly-written stories. Reading fairy tales and adventures. If I have an addiction, it’s reading; I lose all sense of self-control and regularly stay up well past my bedtime to finish a book.
One of the skills I’ve only recently developed as a reader is the ability to decide to stop reading. If a story is particularly uninteresting, or the characters annoy me, or if the writing is truly abominable, I used to just soldier on through. But no more. I’m getting close to 40, and I have decided my time is valuable. Just the other day, I got annoyed with the characters in book number 5 of a “cozy” murder mystery series I’d been making my way through; I just couldn’t stand to waste any more time on characters who stubbornly refused to develop. So I skipped to the end to find the chapters where they laid out their explanations and solved the murders. I would never, ever have considered doing that even five years ago. In fact, I would’ve considered it sacrilegious to the reading experience. But I’m becoming story-rebellious in my advanced age.
But when the writing is good? I can’t read it fast enough. I become immersed, involved, turning each page with bated breath. Mouthing out the lines the characters speak to each other. Cheering them on when they make good choices or tumbling through disappointment when they make bad ones.
I don’t have a conclusion on this one. Just… reading is nice, yknow?