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

[darkemeralds]

Major life stresses affect everything. Nobody probably in the whole wide world right now is able to function at the level of the Before Times, and that's without taking into account personal illness, family loss, income loss, etc.

Ebooks on an e-reader dissolve significant reading barriers for me: eyesight decline (font size, lighting) and the hand arthritis that makes it painful for me to hold a book open. Since I live in a very small house, it also helps mitigate the book-storage problem.

I don't love supporting Amazon, but I really do love my Kindle Oasis.

[ranunculus]

One of my hesitations is that the Kindle does look like a good product, probably the best out there BUT I won't buy from Amazon. Sigh.