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

[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!