You can probably guess what this post is about given the title.
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Last year, a thought came to me that has defined me ever since.
“*When was the last time I just read a book*?”
A bit of backstory (heh!) on me. As a kid, I was always reading. I absolutely adored a good book. One of the highlights of the year at school would be the annual Scholastic book fair and I can recall pleading with my mum, a Teaching Assistant, to buy me something. My mother, the saint that she is, would always relent.
I was far from sporty at school (in fact I was morbidly obese,) so lunch breaks were often spent indoors reading books. As you can imagine given my size and the fact that I was sensitive, I was bullied a great deal, so reading provided an escape.
But as I developed from tween to teen and much more from teen to the awkwardness of puberty, I simply finished reading. No longer did I seek out book stores and hunt down something new to read, now replaced with browsing my laptop each night (the irony of me using a laptop right now is not lost on me.)
In 2015, I met a very special person. Cassidy adores reading, and she’d always tell me about the plots of the various books she was diving into. And yet, my brain didn’t see the universe’s sign that I should get back into reading.
Well last year, it happened. I was in a Waterstones here in the UK, enjoying the quaint, quietness of it all, surrounded by books. And I thought “*When was the last time I just read a book*?” I of course had read since falling out of the world of literature, but it was hardly something I actively partook in. I’d read what I needed to read and not a stanza more.
Realising the chance to rekindle an old flame, I grabbed a book, Rahul Raina’s How to Kidnap the Rich. The story is a thrill ride and I highly recommend it to anyone looking for a good read to cosy up to. But more than anything, I loved how it felt to step into a new world. To feel what it was like in New Dehli with Ramesh and Rudi. I could practically feel myself sweating due to the proverbial heat.
With the book finished, I decided to try something else, A Close and Common Orbit by Becky Chambers, the sequel to my much-beloved The Long Way to A Small Angry Planet (I had read this and had loved it, and yet even in the face of that, it had not persuaded me to get back into reading.) From New Dehli to the realms of sci-fi with Lovelace, Pepper, and others, I again fell in love with being back into reading just as much as I fell in love with the Wayfarer world.
And here we are. Just over a year after I picked up How to Kidnap the Rich and now on my 41st book in this new chapter of my life (David Wellington’s Paradise-1.) And for as happy as I am, I do think back on the years of stories that I missed out on simply because I stopped. And maybe that’s the worst part of it. I didn’t stop to do better things, I didn’t stop because I was too busy to read. Heck, I didn’t stop because I was being bullied. I just stopped.
I’m not sure what I’m saying, if there’s a message to all of this, but I wanted to share my reading story. Earlier this year, I made the leap to Kindle (don’t crucify me!) and love having a world of stories at my disposal. But each day, I ask myself that question.
Why did I ever stop reading?
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by tlowson1
2 Comments
I had the same experience too! I guess it was because I was too obsessed with the internet and not patient enough to read. I was just anxious and constantly checking how many pages I went through💀 but I still love the feeling of stepping into the world of words so I picked up the hobby! Blessed to have books in life 😉
I’ve got a Kindle too, it was meant to help with my bulging bookshelves. It didn’t. But I still read books on there, mainly stuff that I can’t get my hands on physically such as out of print books and fanfic. My Kindle was always helpful for reading at school as I didn’t have to spend time flipping to where I was.