darkemeralds. (Reply)

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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.