When do you read? How do you read? How much do you read?

[darkemeralds]

I'm at a crossroads. No, not the demon-summoning kind. I have almost completely lost the ability to sit and read, but I want to read.

For a few years it was just books, while I was still readily able to enjoy masses of fic, and ebooks, on a portable device. Regardless of format/medium, I still loved losing myself in a story.

Now it's everything. I can't seem to sit and read anymore.

The internet is largely to blame: I recognize its adverse impact on my attention span, and that impact seems to be extreme in my case. I also acknowledge that in swapping an hour's daily commute by bus for the same commute by bike, I've exchanged one of my best reading moments for an exercise moment.

But it's not just about time. I have more time, because I've cut television hours down to two or three a week; my day to day life is pretty orderly, and frankly I pay people to do the time-consuming stuff I don't like; I need the same amount of sleep I've always needed; and my social life has taken no extraordinary leaps.

So

• Do you read books? In what formats?
• How would you describe your relationship to reading?
• How much do you read--hours per week, books per month, however you measure it?
• When? Under what circumstances?
• Is there something you specifically don't do to make time for reading?
• Have you noticed a decline in attention--in the ability to sit and read? And if so, how do you deal with it?

I'd really like to know.

Comments

[executrix]

I still read mad bookz! I don't have any dedicated electronic reading devices, although if I have to I'll read on the computer screen. (I won't, f'rex, print out fics just to avoid reading on screen).

I have to read and write all the time for work, but I buy a lot of books, take a lot home from Book Sale, *go* to other people's book sales, and check a lot of books out of the library.

Since I work at home, it would be impractical to read while commuting (I'd trip over the living room ottoman...). I shudder to quantify how much though.

Also, one of the main reasons I do the exercise bike at the gym for cardio is that it's much easier to read on an exercise bike than on a treadmill, elliptical, or rowing machine. (It would be a trip trying to read while swimming...)

In my earlier years of fandom, I didn't read very much because I pretty much spent every available waking moment writing fics. Now that I'm writing less, and reading less fic, reading expands to fill the time involved.

I suspect that building back up after a decline in attention span is a lot like building back up to exercise after an injury. You'll be in a huge mess if you force yourself back to the previous level rather than saying, OK! I used to be able to run three miles, and now I can only run half a mile. That's half a mile TODAY, .6 miles with lots of warm-up for my next run, then .7 miles...

[darkemeralds]

Thanks for the detailed reply. It's very helpful, and I was thinking of you as being among the readingest of my friends.

I like the analogy with exercise, and I think some sort of plan of reading development would make a lot of sense: a quarter of an hour today, 20 minutes tomorrow...

Also, I love the choice of gym machine based on whether you can read on it. Sadly, since I already work those muscles to the exclusion of all others, it would be overkill to ride an exercise bike at the gym. Hm.

Clearly, audiobooks are gonna be my best friend when I (inevitably) take up going to the gym again--as they are on my bike. I do consume a bit of written material by that means, and it's the only thing that has kept me even marginally in touch with what's out there.

I have a good novel, in hardcover, right now. I'll use it as my testing ground, and give myself a timeline for finishing it. Hee! It's like being a recalcitrant second-grader with a book report (except that when I was in second grade, you couldn't pry me away from my books).

Thanks!

[darkemeralds]

And speaking of books, I've been meaning to tell you that the Butler's Guide book arrived a couple of weeks ago and I've been implementing many of his methods, especially with regard to leather care and silver polishing. And now that I'm planning another trip at last, I'm eager to try his folding and packing tips.

It's a wonderful book!

[cookiemom6067]

I used to read ALL the TIME - I was one of those people that always had her nose stuck in a book. I was a lot like my father in that regard. It actually caused me problems from time to time, as I could not be arsed to put the book down even if I was supposed to be doing something less interesting, like, say...working.

It prompted my husband once to point out that lying in bed reading all day long probably wasn't doing anything good for my depression (and he was right). I used to go through an easy book every day (say, in the 200 page range, of not very demanding quality). Something like LOTR would take me a week, give or take. This was pre-ereader, of course. I frequently re-read old favorites.

My reading habits underwent a radical change when I discovered fan fiction in 2007.

I now read fan fiction obsessively in the same way I used to read books. That includes the "getting into trouble at work" thing, and the "husband thinks it's not helping my depression" thing. I have a lot of trouble reading anything with actual pages.

To me, it's like a steady diet of candy - tastes good at the time, really hard to stop eating it, but it doesn't do me any favors. I find it increasingly difficult to read non-fiction books that would be helpful in my work because of my penchant for reading REALLY easy fiction on the internet. I also find that I am plain lazy about exploring characters that are new to me. What I used to get out of re-reading my old favorites - familiarity with settings and characters and fondness for known plots is largely replaced by similar qualities in fan fiction. Even magazines are largely displaced, as I get a lot of that information from news feeds on my desktop, my flist and forums that I visit occasionally.

I feel pretty bad about this, really. As I lifelong avid reader, I feel like I shouldn't be so enthralled with what I'm able to find on LJ and the like.

Sometimes, particularly when I'm reading something that really is less than stellar, I discover that I'm bored, and in fact have been bored for some time - hours or even days. Instead of seeking out a pathway to more interesting fare, I find myself refreshing my flist or re-reading stories I've read before, instead of reading the dozen or so magazines I've bought but not cracked open, or one of the upwards of 200 books in my personal library that I've purchased but not read/finished.

Like many of my personality quirks, I'm at a loss to explain this inclination on my part to bore myself to tears, but I suspect that I have low expectations in general for myself at this particular time.

This is definitely a function of my low self-esteem right now, something that crops up occasionally.

[darkemeralds]

You make an interesting point about the candy aspect of reading. I know for myself that when I discovered fanfic and got really involved in reading it, its crack-like qualities were an order of magnitude greater than, say, reading every Regency romance I could find, or mass-consuming Stephen King (though there were some similarities, to be sure).

I re-listen to certain podfics and even a couple of pro audiobooks, but when I do, I find that it's because I'm kind of mentally worn out: I need something, but getting into new material feels too onerous. Certainly depression made me feel that way a lot more of the time. I'm not sure that frequently revisiting stories that are comfortable and good friends is a bad thing, though of course excessiveness in anything is usually a sign of something not being quite right.

The fact that you do read, though, is interesting: whatever else fanfic and online life might have done to your brain, at least you still take in text visually. That's the missing component for me: seriously, I think I'd be glad to be mass-consuming fic at this point, because it would at least be reading.

Still, there really is more mentally nourishing stuff out there, and that's what I'd like to be accessing again. I'd access all of it via audiobook except that a) a huge percentage of fiction I want to read is not available that way and b) it's a very slow way of reading and has its own set of limitations. And it's expensive. Geez.

Thanks for the long and thoughtful comment. I hope there's something that can give you a boost out of your low mood. I know how that feels, and it feels awful, and you are such a talented and intelligent person that the world really would be a better place with you feeling more like your true self!

[vampirefan]

this totally sounds like me. i used to read harlequin romances and some, for some reason, westerns, and a lot of scifi/fantasy. a book a day for years. in school i would read instead of paying attention. i am positive i read at least 352 books a year, sometimes more, during my freshman and sophmore years of highschool.

i would troll the bookstores, used and new, and spend at least $30 a month on books.

now, all i do is read j2 or spn. i go through so much fic it's ridiculous. i do re-read old stuff especially when i come across sequels!

i keep buying books, much less than before, for series that i love (like jim butcher's harry dresden, or jd ward's brotherhood, or patricia brigg's mercy thompson...) but havne't read the damn things 'cause i'm too caught up in j2! (and omg i just bookmarked like 5 new fics today!) i follow all the bigbang comms...

fanfic as crack cocaine...

[karen_jk]

This is my story too, almost exactly.

[donutsweeper]

I don't read as much as I used to either. Well, read actual published things. I used to get 10 or 20 books out of the library and read them one after another. Now, not so much.

I still do read a lot of fanfic, but I tend to shy away from the very long works or find myself scrolling through the boring bits. And it's rarer for me to *just* read. A lot of times I have other windows open and and doing a few things at once.

I do have an ereader app for my ipod touch and I have read books on it (there are so many free ones available through Project Gutenberg) but I put some fanfic on it and find myself reading and rereading that instead, usually in bits and pieces, a few minutes here and there.

I wish I had the staying power I used to, I just don't SIT and READ anywhere as often as I used to and I miss it.

[darkemeralds]

Wow--what you describe is so similar to what I'm experiencing! I don't read on my laptop much, only the occasional short fic, and of course, numerous blogs (but--heh--I do a lot of that during the workday, so it's not like it's stealing time that I'd otherwise spend with a book open in my hands).

The funny thing is, we read constantly, but as you say, in snippets, without full attention. One of the greatest moments in all my memory is from the time when I was about seven years old and discovered the joy of reading a book without pictures. It was, as I recall, a Nancy Drew mystery (its own kind of crack, back in the day), and I have a vivid memory of looking up after two whole hours and realizing that I had been somewhere else, in that other world with Nancy and Bess and George and poor Kissless Ned.

It makes me sad to have lost that. I don't know if I can ever really get it back--too much critical faculty operating, too much writing under my own belt, not nearly enough suspension of disbelief anymore--but some part of just the sheer joy of sitting and reading (regardless of delivery method) really would be nice to regain, wouldn't it?

[twasadark]

I find that I go in waves when it comes to reading. I literally went years without reading fiction of any kind, then years when all I read was fiction (and fan fiction at that, lol). Right now I'm mainly reading fanfic on my Kindle. I've got books stacked up all over the place and on my vacation, which starts in a week, I'll be taking a bunch of books - a mix of fiction and nonfiction that have been sitting around here for a while.

I read whenever I want - usually in the evenings, especially before going to bed. Though when I'm working on a writing project I read less than at other times. I can't really measure the amount of time I spend reading, but it depends on my mood and on what else I have going on in my life. I also listen to a lot of podfic so I get my stories in that way.

[darkemeralds]

I'm starting to think that Kindle might be the magic word here. I've resisted it, but I have to admit that my phone is too small, and that my eyesight would be happier with digital ink than with LED. A certain percentage of my resistance to reading actual books is physical discomfort--with text size, lighting, heaviness, portability, etc.

I read a good deal less when I'm writing, too--which is really to be expected, I suppose. And I get almost all my written material these days through audio, so I'm getting some stories (fic, and pro) and a fair bit of nonfiction, which I really enjoy. It's possible that I just need to give in and admit that my attention deficit just will never again allow me to sit and read with my eyes. So thank goodness for audible.com and podfic, huh?

But I'm not quite ready to concede quite yet. I'll have to think about a Kindle. They've come down so far in price. Which model do you have?

[ruric]

My reading goes in phases.

Throughout most of my teens, 20s and 30s I read voraciously - with anything up to 10 books on the go at any one time. I couldn't wrap my head around the idea of people who didn't read. My ex - when I met him - was 9 years older than me, used to read like me but admitted he'd not touched a non-study related book in something like 6 years. I broke him out of that with Heinlein's Time Enough For Love. *G* Cut to my 40s and I'll go months without reading (books - witness the pile of 64-ish to read on my bedside cabinet - or fic) and then I'll binge. So answering your questions.

(a) Yes I read books intermittently. I read a bunch when we were travelling in the US last year, spent all day driving and then in the evenings was spending an hour or more reading. I read paper books, I don't have an e-reader. I like holding a physical book, it's easier to read in bed and OMG less eye strain considering how many hours I already spend looking at a screen.

(b) Relationship to reading? Entertainment, refuge, love of language, ideas, storytelling and worldbuilding. I shoudl say I stil tend to read pretty exclusively in the sci fi fantasy arena with the odd notable exception. I read a lot of rec's from ravurian and other friends. I also frequently re-read old favourites. When the world gets too much to deal with from time to time I crawl away into another world. Also I'm a completist, I think there's only one book I started and never finished. I will be there to the bitter end even if it is crap.

(c) Books to be read, pile of 64 in my bedroom. Uh...I may have added a few to it recently too. Though one of those I read in 2 days *G* I don't set myself targets - takes all the fun out of it. Things to be read will be read - eventually.

(d) I used to read every night for at least an hour when I went to bed and very occasionally at work at lunch time. Recently not so much with the reading in bed as I've been spending more time online. During the day I tend to find there are other things I should be doing rather than reading (gardening, dejunking, sorting out my long term finances). I still read voraciously on holiday. Last year in the US I ploughed through 6 or 7 books while we were travelling including the first two of the Game Of Thrones. I'm planning on doing some serious amounts of reading in Wales in April when I go to the cottage.

(e) Writing. I tend to find I can either read or write but I can't do both at once any more. When I'm fired up with wanting to write I can't read (either books or fanfic). I'm hoping it's just a phase and that it will pass but it's been a few years now.

(f) No. It's not so much attention span as the need/desire to do other things. I figure once I have completed my dejunk and got the garden sorted for this year I may have more time to both read and write.

[darkemeralds]

ravurian and his recs are actually the source of this post. He's urged me to read several good things and even threatened offered to mail me books (which I exhorted him not to do because that's just...ridiculously generous and unnecessary); and his recs are so apt and interesting that I feel utterly lame saying, "But I just don't read anymore."

I think long drives/train rides/flights are the last refuge of reading for me: times and places where there is truly nothing else to do. That sounds awful, because I don't experience reading as a terrible chore, and yet that's how I treat it: as the very last thing I'd ever do. There's some kind of cognitive dissonance here.

The hour before bed was always my best reading time (even if it did lead to three hours I should have been sleeping), and indeed here I am in the hour before bed, online and using it in exactly the same winding-down way that reading used to serve. Hm.

I hope you have a wonderful time at the cottage in Wales. That sounds so peaceful!

[llaras]

I don't read as much as I used to, on purpose. My main reading time for books was when I smoked. I quit (100 days ago!) and thus had to quit the things I had associated with smoking. Now, I won't forgo reading books forever. That would be crazy. But I'm hoping a time will soon come when I will be able to open a book without also wanting to open a pack of cigarettes.

[darkemeralds]

A hundred days? That's FANTASTIC! Congratulations!!

It seems like a really valid reason for temporarily not reading, and for what it's worth, I can get behind the wheel of a car without ever thinking about lighting up, something that, once upon a time, seemed impossible to me. I'm so please for you. That is a HUGE accomplishment!

reading meme

[(Anonymous)]

This is Vambrace (I don't have a dreamwidth account). I read books on my Kindle now; I can't seem to sit down with an actual book and read it anymore, either. It seems as if the fiction I read that my friends write is as good as, or better than, commercially produced books. If I read for entertainment, I might as well read what entertains me the most, right? I would rather read Restraint than the latest best seller. I have a Master's degree in English with a core in the English Renaissance. I know what I'm looking at.

Re: reading meme

[darkemeralds]

Hi vambrace! Thanks for stopping by to comment. I don't know if you'll see this response, but I must thank you for your high praise of Restraint.

I couldn't agree more that reading for entertainment is pointless unless one is really entertained; a good fic is more entertaining that almost anything, in my book (no pun intended). It's just that at this point, I can't even seem to concentrate on that--that's what I'm finding distressing.

By no means do I have a goal of getting back to "real" books vetted by publishers and made of paper (though as it happens I'm trying to read one of those right now). I'd just like to regain access to reading, anything, with my eyes, and having that wonderful immersive experience again.

communicator downthread a ways points out that stress may be a bigger factor than I'd supposed in this loss of attention and concentration. Food for much thought there.

Thanks again for commenting.

[tehomet]

Do you read books? In what formats?

Yes, in regular wedge-of-processed-tree format. I don't have an e-reader partly because I can't afford it and partly because although I love my laptop, I don't want to spend more time than I already do in front of a screen for eco reasons, so despite the advantages of e-readers, I can't be bothered to save up for one.

How would you describe your relationship to reading?

Intense, devoted, and of long standing. I started reading when I was two. Like a lot of people who had challenging childhoods, sometimes reading is an escape. So the intense concentration I was capable of when I was a kid and a teenager was partially self-defense, I think. When I was seven, I'd read everything in the children's section of the library, so my mother made arrangements for me to check books out of the adult section, providing a librarian vetted my choices. (God be with the days when 'adult section' just meant 'books for adults' and not 'porn.'!) Obviously I read all through college, although usually not the course texts. :) I love books so much, I used to own a bookstore, basically so I could read all the time.

How much do you read--hours per week, books per month, however you measure it?

An hour per day, minimum. It used to be three hours a day when I worked in an office and had an hour commute on the train each way. I miss that! The opportunity, not the commuting.

When? Under what circumstances?

I used to literally sit and read for hours on end. But not anymore, I don't have the time. Now I have a cup of tea after I eat, and I read then if I'm not chatting with people. I carry my book with me in my bag so I can read in queues or waiting rooms. If I have time, I read in the evenings. And I read a bit before I go to sleep. I usually have two books on the go. The book I read at bedtime is much lighter than the one I read during the day. And I read fanfiction off and on during the day, as well. In fact, I think to some degree, fanfiction has replaced the fiction books I used to read. Now my daytime books tend to be non-fiction which usen't to be the case.

Is there something you specifically don't do to make time for reading?

Yes, I deliberately don't watch much TV, and that which I watch, I watch online so I can fast forward through the credits and skip the ads.

Have you noticed a decline in attention--in the ability to sit and read? And if so, how do you deal with it?

Yes. Some of it is simply that I'm busier now than I used to be. Some of it is due to too much caffeine, too much stress, and to reading in little chunks rather than in swathes. I switched to herb tea but I can't do much about the other stuff at the moment, unfortunately. And some of it is down to my current circumstances, where I live. I would never rent a DVD to watch either, because I know I'd be interrupted, so I go to the cinema - I hate that feeling when my concentration gets broken, it's sort of painful. In the same way, when I want to read, I go out to the garden or into the den and close (and sometimes, actually lock) the door. I'm a big fan of doing only one thing at a time as an anti-stress measure, and if I have to lock a door to do it, I will!

[darkemeralds]

I don't think I knew that you are a former bookstore owner. My father, also a great lover of books, went something like that route, dealing in old and rare books by mail order. He had a good eye. I'm afraid I didn't inherit it.

Not surprisingly here in Journal World, you're one of several people to have mentioned that fic has taken up a lot of reading that used to go to "real" books. I have no quarrel with that at all--I view it as part of the fascinating and massive cultural and economic shift happening as a result of highly distributed information, and heaven knows fanfic was a mainstay of my reading life until I apparently lost the ability to read at all.

I like your practical approach to the attention problem: go to the cinema, lock the door, switch to herb tea. Sane steps to take, and man, what a powerful statement this is: "doing only one thing at a time as an anti-stress measure."

I need to take that to heart. I think there's a huge clue for me there. Thank you for it.

[alex_beecroft]

Between reading "how to write" books and history/non-fiction books for research, I don't seem to find time to read for pleasure either. When I do, it's often fanfic because that's more of a known quantity than a new book by an author I don't know. If the fanfic's no good, I can just backspace and move on to the next one.

I do blame the computer. I'm on here all hours of the day, and I must cut that back to leave room for life and work.

[darkemeralds]

I'm pretty much online from the moment I wake up to the moment I turn out the lights at night--and with my new Android phone, I can even reach over in my sleep and be online on the tiny screen. It's crazed.

Fanfic is very non-demanding, isn't it? Even the best of it, the really well-written and challenging stuff, being free, is easy enough to bypass if it doesn't appeal. I think it's probably inevitable that all reading is going in that direction, very much like music: there is just so much of it out there, and it's become so nearly free, that we can taste and sample and experiment and move on.

It can't be good for the focus and concentration, but I'm not sure how to correct for other than adhering artificially to old standards and traditions just for the sake of tradition.

[communicator]

emerald these are great questions. At the moment I have been feeling stressed-to-miserable about losing my job (albeit it was by my own decision) and I notice that stress massively reduces how well I can concentrate on reading. Funnily enough I can still read poetry - it's the same when I'm ill too, I read poetry in hospital. But as you say, spending time online is also a big factor. It's more distracting and less demanding, when I am feeling emotionally maxed-out.

I think my reading-attention may be coming back now, I hope so.

I think I'll take your questions to my own blog if I may, because they are interesting.

[darkemeralds]

Please help yourself to the questions. I'll be interested to read what you write on the subject.

Believe it or not, I had not actually considered stress as a factor in loss of reading attention--and I consider stress a factor in everything.

I realized last night after posting this and seeing so many interesting comments that my desire to "read more" is, at the moment, of a piece with my desire to accomplish more of everything--that it is, in short, one more stressor in my life, one more goad.

That is no way to have a relationship with any text. Thank you for that clue: it's a big one.

[layne67]

I read, a lot! I remember reading everything and anything when I was small, and I LOVE books. I love the old-fashion books, nothing like the feel of paper between your hands, still can't get into Kindles and such, and I can't read from the tiny screens of handphones! I used to read magazines too ( front to back, the editorials, the ads! ) but I no longer have the time for that.

If I could, I'd read all day long lol. As it is, I read when I'm waiting in line at the banks etc, I read when eating, I read just before going to sleep. I draw the line at reading in the toilets though lol.

It used to be one book every three days or so but since I discovered fanfics on the internet, my time for book-reading has sadly decreased, but that doesn't stop me from buying books!

[darkemeralds]

It seems very nearly unanimous: those who still read, read a lot of fanfic where books used to be, and nearly everyone will admit to reading less than they used to. It doesn't surprise me that my flist is composed of serious, committed readers, though.

I'm wondering if I'll transition back through fanfic to books, or what. Since posting this, I've decided to commit to reading fifteen minutes a day for pleasure. Doesn't have to be a paper book or even a published book, but glancing distractedly through a short fic on someone's LJ doesn't count. It has to be reading.

So far, I've managed two days out of three. I'm not sure it's recoverable.

[executrix]

Oooh, look, I think you'll want to read THIS:

http://www.grist.org/article/2011-03-24-how-women-rode-the-bicycle-into-the-future-slideshow

[darkemeralds]

I can't believe I didn't comment on this! I read through that article and enjoyed the illustrations immensely. I can speak from personal experience about the immensely liberating effect of riding a bicycle, though in my case at the opposite end of the 20th century, it's a liberation from excessive travel, pointless car trips, and soul-deadening traffic jams.

It has also given me inner and outer strength which I was beginning to believe were lost to the years. Bicycling can transform lives.

My sister works with the Community Cycling Center--a labor of passion and love for her--and she teaches new immigrants, notably women and children from Somalia, to ride bikes. She says that seeing young women experience that freedom and joy the first time they pick up their feet and start pedaling is one of the best things she's ever experienced.