My wife wrote a book long before we met. I have been dragging my feet reading it. It isn’t the quality or the storytelling that effects me from reading it. I just never cared for reading as a way of entertainment. I want to finish it, but I am a snail. I’ll read 5 pages then stop for weeks. It has been a month since I looked at it last.
I feel so bad for not finishing it.
High school reading assignments put me off of it I think. I got D’s in English
by pyroguy174
15 Comments
Try reading books that are made into films you’ve already watched?? (HP, LOTR, Fight club, etc). That’s how I started. I watched HP films when I was little but only read the books the summer before joining college. You already know the story so you’ll find it easier to visualise and also have a sense of achievement when you finish a book and want to read more.
Audiobooks are a good way to slide into reading. Or not. But at least you won’t miss out on great writing.
As for your wife’s book, as a wife who wrote a book, it would truly mean everything if you read it and talked to your wife about it. I use a crappy, free text-to-speech app to read my books aloud to myself while I’m driving. Listening to any book while driving is about the only way I can force myself to read these days. Otherwise, I’m a mood reader. I gotta be in exactly the right mood for that book, and Heaven help me if my mood changes before I finish it lol. Try finding the right circumstances to read her book if you want to go for the physical copy (rainy day, bathtub, parking lot with the windows down, fireside, etc)
It’s ok if you don’t like reading. Maybe showing support for your wife in this particular way is a task you need to be disciplined about, instead of something you’re going to teach yourself to love for its own sake. Set a goal, like reading 3 pages a day, and try to hold yourself to it. If you’d read 3 pages a day during the month since you’ve picked it up, you’d be nearly 100 pages ahead of where you are now!
I love to read. But I can only read books that fit a specific niche or genre for me. If I try to read books and I’m just not into it, it feels like a chore. (I have never been able to get into Lord of the Rings or The Hobbit, which is sacrilege to most people, yet I love Harry Potter).
In other words, trying to force yourself to like something you don’t like isn’t going to work. You have to find a topic or genre that appeals to you. Maybe it’s historical fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, maybe even just comic books. My favorite is “hard sci-fi”, and yet I’ve read a lot of books that are supposed to fall into that category that I don’t like.
If you don’t like the book your wife wrote, just tell her she did and excellent job writing it but it’s just not a genre that you can get into.
It’s okay to admit you don’t like reading. It doesn’t make you dumb or something.
There’s a whole world of interests out there, of which reading is just one.
That said, if you want to get into reading, you have to find your people. Certain authors, or genres, or stories will speak to you the most above others. Once you click with one thing, it will be easier to move on to others.
15 minutes a day, at a fixed time – its meditation, therapy, self discipline- doing something diligently that you don’t like. Builds new sunapses. Now i should follow my own advice and get off reddit
Not everything is for everyone. Maybe reading for pleasure just isn’t for you.
10 pages per day. Anybody can commit to reading just 10 pages.
There’s a difference between ‘getting into books in general’ and ‘reading the one book my own wife wrote’. I mean books in general are a nice hobby but it’s not *required*. The book your wife wrote is a totally different question. It’s personal.
Re: ‘reading the one book my wife wrote’ – I’m going to be very blunt here. Just read it. Wife matters, book matters. Get it done. I don’t care if you don’t like reading in general. Don’t whimp out after 5 pages like a kid who doesn’t want to eat vegetables. You must have done something that’s difficult before, right? Maybe for work? Or for a school assignment? You must have done things because there was a deadline and they had to be done, right? You can do this too. Just make this one book (and your wife) a priority.
If you’ve got a learning disability that effects your ability to read, I’ll cut you some slack. But you still have to show an interest. So have your wife read the book TO you, a chapter a night, instead of watching TV.
Find something you’re interested in and try those genres.
Listen to audiobooks when you’re doing other things, like driving, drawing, gaming, or whatever.
Start small. Flash fiction and short stories are entire stories you could read in minutes or a day.
In the end, if you don’t enjoy reading, you don’t enjoy it.
Reading for pleasure is like running: some people just don’t like it, and there’s not much to do about that, and that’s okay!
But also, both reading and running are things you can work at in baby steps, and it becomes easier and more pleasurable as you go.
If you like fiction films, you already like storytelling! Now what you need to do is explore other ways to get a story.
Read anything that attracts you, no matter the format or genre. Short stories, fairytales, poetry even! Children’s books or YA! Comics, manga or “bande dessinée”! Audiobooks (books read out loud by one person) or audiodramas/audioplays/radioplays (like a theatre play recorded on audio, usually with full cast and sound effects etc). Even some story-driven podcasts (my fav are Welcome to Night vale and The Magnus Archives).
The idea is to explore indiscriminately and nonjudgmentally, and find what works for you.
Also, start small and don’t get discouraged. If you can only read for 5min at a time before your attention wanders, that’s okay! No beginner runner can be expected to run a marathon straight away, right? I usually aim to read *a little bit* everyday, even if it’s very short. And when I start to get tired or distracted, I try to geeeeeently push through a tiny bit. And then I stop and do something else! It also helps to not leave reading to the evening, when I’m already tired and lack concentration.
If you can’t get yourself to read the book written by the woman you love, then…. oof.
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>High school reading assignments put me off of it I think. I got D’s in English
This article on Slate describes how messed up and inefficient a lot of American reading education was for a lot of students: [The Decades-Long Travesty That Made Millions of Americans Mistrust Their Kids’ Schools](https://slate.com/human-interest/2023/10/reading-phonics-literacy-calkins-curriculum-public-school.html)
Getting a reading tutor as a grown man might be a drastic step, but it might be something that helps you learn to engage with written works.
I only like reading a few specific genres so maybe you haven’t found what you liked yet.
If you turn on the accessibility feature on Amazon Alexa you can have Alexa read ebooks to you. Her voice is obviously not the best but it might help you to listen while you do mundane tasks. I prefer to listen while driving or cleaning because it’s just enough mental stimulation for me to be able to concentrate on listening. If I try to listen and do nothing then my mind wanders.