Reading and listening

[darkemeralds]

I continue to have trouble focusing on reading. I mean actual reading from a book.

In an attempt to re-corral my attention and recover some of that pleasure, I've

• Sworn off social media (we'll see how long that lasts...)
• Joined a silent reading party where twice a month we get together on Zoom and just read for two hours (a form of accountability)
• Got at least four very different books going (so that when it's reading time, I can pick what I'm in the mood for)
• Established a couple of comfortable and well-lighted places to read.

So far this year I've finished:

• Natalie Goldberg's Three Simple Lines (a lovely memoir and rumination on haiku)
• David Mitchell's Number9 Dream (long novel; I'm aiming to read all his novels in 2022)
• Ken Mogi's Awakening Your Ikigai (kind of a little philosophy/lifestyle guide)

Currently in progress:

• Colson Whitehead's Harlem Shuffle (a caper/heist novel)
• Richard Tarnas's The Passion of the Western Mind (a huge survey of western philosophy)
• Sean Russell's Moontide and Magic Rise (a really long fantasy that I've been picking at for several months)
• Matthew Salesses's Craft in the Real World (on correcting some of the faults of the American MFA writing program)

...plus a bunch of audiobooks. I get a ton of reading done via audiobooks, and I'm okay with that, but there's nothing quite like the pleasure of silent, visual reading.

How do others keep themselves reading?

Comments

[ruric]

I've read so few published books the last 5 years or so. I have the occasional binge for a week or a fanfic weekend but I've just got out of the habit of reading.

I've started listening to audiobooks when pottering around the flat doing stuff which means I feel like I'm catching up on some of the things I wanted to 'read' but there's a pile of 90+ books which glare malevolently from my bedside cabinet every time I'm in my bedroom.

I have hopes that once I get back to commuting into the office by public transport a couple of times a week in March that will give me about 40mins pre trip to do some dedicated reading!

But I suspect I need to limit my Insta and Twitter use and to claw that time back for other things!

[darkemeralds]

Exactly. As I've commented to a couple of other people above, I'm fine with fanfic. To me, it "counts" as areading, because it IS reading and not doomscrolling on Twitter. I make a point of putting fanfic on my Kindle, though, so that if I want to read it, I read it on a distraction-free device.

Audiobooks have been the absolute salvation of my brain over the past several years. I love them. I get almost all my reading done as listening, just as you describe, and I'm definitely not one of those people who think that audiobook listening is a lower form.

But I do find that actual, visual reading of words on (some version of) a page does something for me that audiobooks don't. That single focus for long periods of time, and that complete engagement, where the movie plays in my mind while the text enters my eyes almost unnoticed, is a kind of magic that I miss.

That's why I think reading fanfic counts as reading.