Wednesday 21 November 2012

Bookish Epiphany Part 3: Getting back on track

This has been a bit of a marathon, but fret not - this is the last post of the bunch!  So, in Part 1 I talked about how dissatisfied I've become with my reading and with the way I seem to keep falling down the twin rabbit holes of trashy telly and the internet instead of doing things I enjoy of an evening, like reading good books and watching documentaries.  In Part 2 I sketched out how my reading has changed from 2006-12, and clearly demonstrated the discrepancy between what I love to read most (as evidenced by my favourite books of each year) and what I'm actually reading (the figures never lie).

That really only leaves one question - where do I go from here?  What have I learned this week, and how do I implement these lessons in such a way that I can start to regain my genuine love for my books and get some much-needed balance back in my free time?


WHAT I HAVE LEARNED
  1. Mixed reading is good reading - I enjoy a really mixed diet of books.  That means classics, history, literary fiction, chick lit, humour and journalism, natural history, science, YA, social sciences and biography.
  2. Not every blogger recommendation is a GOOD recommendation - Just because twenty bloggers have recommended it, doesn't mean it's worth buying.  WHO those bloggers are, and whether I share their tastes and sensibilities, is more important.
  3. I really like non-fiction - Nothing makes me feel quite as satisfied as getting to the end of a book that's taught me something, and where I've had to think and persevere and understand instead of just being able to skim along on the surface.  Books about books are also a good bet, for obvious reasons!
  4. I also really like classics - Not every classic hits the spot for me, but the ones that do make up a large proportion of the books I keep and love and re-read.  There's a reason they've stuck around so long!
  5. Quality over quantity - Reading less books but choosing wisely and really enjoying them is FAR preferable to ploughing through twice as many but not clicking with most of them.
  6. Self-inflicted pressure never helps - Feeling like I should be posting reviews twice a week doesn't help.  Joining challenges that I have no chance of finishing doesn't help.  Overthinking and overprescribing and fretting does not a happy reader make.
  7. The internet is a deceptive fiend - I am REALLY good at 'popping online for five minutes' only to come back to consciousness three hours later and realise I've lost another evening.  Then I feel like a muppet and go to bed in a huff.
  8. The BBC is my friend - I love documentaries on BBC2 and BBC Four.  I also love great dramas like The Hour and Homeland (ssh, I know, Channel 4).  I get more out of watching something fascinating at 9pm instead of spending another hour on Pinterest.
  9. I enjoy taking a chance - Picking up books on a whim from the library often yields some of my favourite books of each year.  Taking a chance on something I know very little about, or that is completely outside my comfort zone, is one of the most satisfying parts of my reading life.
  10. Reviewing for others isn't doing me any favours - I'm happiest when I'm free to read whatever I like, whether that's a pile of chick lit over a busy summer or a wave of books on Ancient Egypt because I'm on a history kick.  Throwing compulsory reading into the mix - especially compulsory reading that isn't something I enjoy that much - seems rather counter-intuitive.


WHAT I PLAN TO DO ABOUT IT
  1. Take the blog down a notch - That means less filler, more substance.  Instead of feeling like I NEED to post three or four times a week, I'm going to scale things down and start enjoying what I write again!  I'll review to the timetable of my reading instead of reading to fit a review timetable, if you see what I mean...  Hopefully it'll just loosen everything up and take the pressure off. 
  2. Get off the reviewer radar - Reviewing for RHCP was a great privilege at the beginning, partially because much of what I read I'd chosen from their blogger bulletins, or I was emailed first to see if I was interested.  These days it seems many books are just sent out regardless so I've ended up with a big pile of titles that I'm not really interested in but still feel obligated to read.  I've asked to be removed from their mailing list and I'll just read and review the couple that HAVE piqued my interest in the near future.
  3. Quit planning - We all know that the moment you make a list of books you want to read next, you end up desperate to read something else entirely.  So I'm going to stop for a while and see what happens.  When I finish a book, I'll go up to the flat and choose something else.  Something that I want to read RIGHT NOW - not next week, not next month, NOW.
  4. Challenge-Free for 20-1-3 - I'm always tempted by challenges.  Always.  But I don't think I've finished a single one yet, and they just end up hanging over me in December chortling to themselves.  Yes, they've pushed me towards some great books in the past - but the whole point of this exercise is to start doing that for myself again, so maybe I won't need them in 2013!
  5. No to the numbers game - An extension of the Challenge-Free 2013, this means no numerical target next year.  Not that I ever expect to hit it anyway, but subconsciously it seems I still feel the need to boost my numbers via quick reads.  My average on a free year seems to be around 40-45 books, so why am I aiming for 75?!
  6. Use the TV guide, Luke - Instead of switching on TV Catchup at 7pm and watching whatever's on, I really want to start planning ahead again.  There are so many wonderful-looking series and one-offs that I've missed because I just didn't bother checking the TV guide online or in the paper.  I can't watch everything, but I won't spot the gems unless I look!
  7. Interacting mindfully - One of my main problems is focus.  How am I reading properly if I'm sitting a foot away from a humming laptop screen?  How am I watching a programme properly if I've got Twitter open in the next tab?  Instead of doing multiple things at once, I'm trying to practise doing one thing at a time.  When something else flits across my mind, I'm trying to set it aside for afterwards.
  8. New and shiny doesn't mean better - Just because a book's hot off the press and everyone's talking about it, doesn't mean I have to buy it right this minute.  In fact, it's often better to wait until the filter's kicked in a bit and there's a more balanced response out there, so I know whether it's worth reading or not.  Being a blogger doesn't mean I have to jump on every bandwagon that rolls past - especially when there are so many awesome books already waiting for me on my bookshelves.
  9. Allow one thing to lead to another - Once upon a time, I would read a bunch of books on a particular topic within a short space of time, because one naturally led to another and I couldn't get enough.  Or maybe I'd watch an amazing programme and want to read the book behind it (Ben Macintyre tends to make a compelling one-off BBC documentary every time he has a new book out, for example), or see a biopic movie and want to know more.  Instead of thinking, "Oh no, I should mix things up more for the blog!" I'd like to go back to following the book trail wherever it may lead!  Who am I reading for, in the end?!
  10. Finding a balance - I don't want to implement a reading plan or only ever watch BBC Four for the rest of my life - but nor do I want to continue to waste hours and hours of my time reading books I'm not enjoying, watching comedy episodes I've only seen two days earlier, and obsessively trawling epic Pinterest boards for days at a time.  Hopefully just being conscious of everything I've talked about this week will help me make better choices and do what I want, when I want, instead of feeling constrained by self-inflicted pressures that I've accidentally allowed to take over!

FINAL THOUGHTS

Crunching numbers and making sweeping statements can start to sound prescriptive, but ultimately this entire Epiphany triptych is about regaining a balance that has been skewed by what I have perceived to be my blogging responsibilities, by my sheer laziness in my free time, and by force of bad habit.  Instead I want to use my time wisely, to read as the mood strikes, to watch some fantastic television alongside the fluff, to break up my evenings between different things instead of spending the whole night hopping across the internet without even realising.  As I have found in the past, before the shop started, before the blog, before challenges and targets and reviews - THAT'S what makes this reader happy.  It's time to rekindle the passion I have for books and learning and everything they bring into my life...  I can't wait to get started!


Thanks to everyone who's read along for the past few days and left comments - there have been some interesting suggestions, lots of 'OMG ME TOO' moments, a little mutual inspiration, and plenty of discussion!  As always, feel free to continue the conversation below (and do a little Carlton Wiggle while you're at it).  I'm off to read me some Anne Fadiman before The Hour comes on, woohoo!  :)

Monday 19 November 2012

Bookish Epiphany Part 2: Devolution by numbers

Yesterday I posted Part 1 of this rather epic exploration of my dissatisfaction with my current relationship with books, as well as with other media that I use on a daily basis - namely, television and the bottomless rabbit hole that is the internet.  I talked about the way my ability to prioritise seems to fail me completely so that I miss out on a lot of the stuff I really used to appreciate, instead spending hours watching the same old telly and messing about online.

In Part 2 I want to delve further into the way my reading habits have changed.  For a while I have been using the collections feature on LibraryThing to add each book I read to a collection for the year (Read in 2011, Read in 2012, etc), but have never actually gone back and looked at them in much detail before.  Until this week my only real interaction with these little reading microcosms has been to idly scroll through them and vaguely feel that some of my previous years' collections contain far more interesting and memorable books than those from the most recent years.  Crunching the numbers over the past few days, looking more closely, I've learned a few startling home truths about my reading habits, which illustrate pretty clearly why my relationship with my reading has gone downhill over the past year or two...

So, here we go.  I started making some kind of record of my reading mid-2006, so that's where we'll start.  I've included university texts where I read them in their entirety (eg. some classic novels) but not if I just used them briefly (eg. for essay research), because there'd be too many to count.  I've classed 'YA and Children's Books' as a genre, simply because I tend to read YA fiction as a break from adult novels and so splitting them up would be beside the point.  The only exceptions to this rule are books like The Wizard of Oz and A Little Princess, which I've counted as classics. 

This may be the most boring post EVER, and if that's the case I do apologise, but I'll be honest... I'm laying this out as much for my own benefit as I am for entertainment value, so just run with it, okay?  Think of it as a chance to get to know me better, and have fun ringing the differences between the statistics here and what I've been reading and reviewing so far this year.  :)

2006 (23 books) 
Male authors: 12 / Female authors: 11
'Serious' books: 14 / 'Fluffy' books: 9
Adult books: 23 / YA and Children's books: 0
Fiction books: 7 / Non-fiction books: 16
By genre
Literary fiction: 5
Miscellaneous non-fiction: 5
Social sciences: 3
Humour: 3
(Auto)Biography: 2
Classics and Poetry:
Travel writing: 1
History: 1
Chick lit: 1
Notes
2006 covered two thirds of my first year at university, and the first semester of my second year.  I read Between the Acts and The Waste Land for my course, and a book on flamenco from the library out of pure interest.  'Books about books' came in the form of Ex Libris and A Book Addict's Treasury, and I also ventured into literary fiction and the social sciences.  I alternated between reading fiction and non-fiction, supplementing heavier classics and ethical manifestos with gripping page-turners and humorous non-fiction.
Highlights
The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafón), A Book Addict's Treasury (Julie Rugg and Lynda Murphy), No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies (Naomi Klein), The Highest Tide (Jim Lynch), Ex Libris (Anne Fadiman), Neither Here Nor There (Bill Bryson)
2007 (42 books)
Male authors: 20 / Female authors: 22
'Serious' books: 20 / 'Fluffy' books: 22
Adult books: 35 / YA and Children's books: 7
Fiction books: 15 / Non-fiction books: 27
By genre
Social sciences: 9
(Auto)Biography: 8
YA and Children's: 7
Chick lit: 4
Classics: 3
Travel: 3
Humour: 3
History: 2
Miscellaneous non-fiction: 2
Literary fiction: 1
Notes
Most of 2007 was spent at university, but actually, simultaneously not there.  A rather hideous depressive episode in the last semester of 2006 meant that I took the decision to spend the rest of the academic year away from my course, resuming my studies in September.   Despite this, I still lived in my uni house, worked locally to make up for my halted student loan, and still had all the perks of a student - like a university library card.  I read tons of non-fiction for pleasure, including lots of social science books (mostly on consumer behaviour and children's welfare), a rather obscure 'biography' of Saint Nicholas and the evolution of the Santa figure, Che Guevara's The Motorcycle Diaries, and a potted history of Eton.  This was also the year of the 'all seven Harry Potter novels' marathon, the year I first read the life-changing Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs, the year I finally reread Wuthering Heights, AND the year I discovered that Nicholas Sparks could make me cry even if I already knew the sad part.  In short, this was a great reading year.  One of the two I look back on and think 'yeah, that was the stuff'. 
Highlights
Shopped: The Shocking Power of British Supermarkets (Joanna Blythman), Wuthering Heights (Emily Brontë), The Story of Childhood: Growing Up in Modern Britain (Libby Brooks), Rebecca (Daphne du Maurier), Books, Baguettes and Bedbugs: The Left Bank World of Shakespeare and Co. (Jeremy Mercer), Hunger: An Unnatural History (Sharman Apt Russell), The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks), Shop 'Til You Drop: Consumer Behaviour and American Culture (Arthur Asa Berger - the chart comparing shopping malls to cathedrals and shopping to religion was particularly memorable)
2008 (42 books)
Male authors: 21 / Female authors: 21
'Serious' books: 26 / 'Fluffy' books: 16
Adult books: 36 / YA and Children's books: 6
Fiction books: 21 / Non-fiction books: 21
By genre
Literary fiction: 9
Social sciences: 6
YA and Children's: 6
(Auto)Biography: 4
Humour: 4
Miscellaneous non-fiction: 4
History: 3
Chick lit: 3
Classics: 2
Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror: 1
Notes
2008 was a very... equal... year in terms of fiction and non-fiction, and male and female authors, leaning towards literary fiction and in-depth non-fiction.  This was the year I was at home, pretty much housebound, thanks to the onset of my agoraphobia.  Many of my favourite books of the year actually came courtesy of a couple of all-out trips to the big library in the next town, where I upheld my university love of taking a chance on all kinds of non-fiction in my quest to learn more about the world.  I read books on Ancient Egypt and Shakespeare, more social science books, and finally picked up A Christmas Carol on Christmas Eve.  I discovered Alice Hoffman and Alan Hollinghurst, and reread childhood favourites Matilda and A Little Princess.  This was also the year Twilight hit our shelves (and screens), so I swallowed that whole as well!  This was the second of my two great reading years, I reckon, because I made the time to do what I love best - learn new things and devour great novels.  This, then, was the pinnacle of my reading pleasure. 
Highlights
A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens), Opening Skinner's Box: Great Psychological Experiments of the Twentieth Century (Lauren Slater), The Swimming-Pool Library (Alan Hollinghurst), The Ice Queen (Alice Hoffman), Snoop: What Your Stuff Says About You (Samuel Gosling), Tutankhamen: Life and Death of a Pharaoh (Christiane Desroches-Noblecourt), Nefertiti (Michelle Moran), Queuing for Beginners: The Story of Daily Life from Breakfast to Bedtime (Joe Moran), The Plug-In Drug: Television, Computers and Family Life (Marie Winn), Good Omens (Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman), This Book Will Save Your Life (A.M. Homes), Year of Wonders (Geraldine Brooks), The Uncommon Reader (Alan Bennett)


2009 (55 books)
Male authors: 28 / Female authors: 27
'Serious' books: 32 / 'Fluffy' books: 23
Adult books: 49 / YA and Children's books: 6
Fiction books: 29 / Non-fiction books: 26
By genre
Literary fiction: 10
(Auto)Biography: 8
Chick lit: 6
Classics: 5
Social sciences: 5
YA and Children's: 5
Miscellaneous non-fiction: 4
Crime and Mystery: 3
Humour: 3
History: 2
Travel writing: 2
Science and Natural history: 1
Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror: 1
Notes
This, for me, seems to be the year that my reading began to go downhill.  The numbers went up, sure, but the quality (or substance, might be a better word) seemed to go down.  The number of YA novels I read equalled the number of classics, for example, and three of them were the rest of the Twilight Saga.  I loved them, sure, but they weren't exactly high literature!  There was still a diversity there - fiction and non-fiction, male and female authors - but there was also a noticeable shift towards easier reading.  This was the year we refitted and opened the shop, and I found myself reading lots of frivolous incoming stock (humorous books on the modern family, for example), as well as more trashy fiction and lovely but undeniably frothy animal autobiographies like Marley and Me and Under the Paw.  This may also, if I'm not very much mistaken, have been the year I first started challenge reading on LibraryThing (the 50-Book Challenge, I think).  Play the numbers game and things start to slide - coincidence?  I think not. 
Highlights
Running with Scissors (Augusten Burroughs), The Hound of the Baskervilles (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle), Cinnamon City: Falling for the Magical City of Marrakech (Miranda Innes), Like Water for Chocolate (Laura Esquivel), Firmin (Sam Savage), The Complete Polysyllabic Spree (Nick Hornby), Egypt's Golden Empire: The Age of the New Kingdom (Joyce Tyldesley), My Autobiography (Charlie Chaplin), Robbing the Bees: A Biography of Honey (Holley Bishop), Gold (Dan Rhodes), Biblioholism (Tom Raabe)


2010 (71 books)
Male authors: 24 / Female authors: 47
'Serious' books: 31 / 'Fluffy' books: 40
Adult books: 54 / YA and Children's books: 17
Fiction books: 53 / Non-fiction books: 18
By genre
YA and Children's: 17
Chick lit: 10
Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror: 9
Literary fiction: 8
Classics: 5
Social sciences: 4
Humour: 4
Crime and Mystery: 4
Travel: 3
Science and Natural history: 3
(Auto)Biography: 2
Food writing: 1
History: 1
Notes
The bookshop was in full swing in 2010, and I started this blog around the time of our first 'birthday' in July.  This was also the year my reading really changed.  For the first time, lightweight books outweighed the more substantial ones, and fiction had a massive lead on non-fiction.  I think there were various contributing factors: ongoing adjustment to the shift from not working at all to working most of the week; boosting my LT challenge reading from 50 books to 75 books; being 'picked up' by Random House Children's Publishing and suddenly having far more YA novels on my shelves than ever before...  There was a massive increase in my consumption of YA fiction, chick lit and paranormal romance - some good, some bad - and a massive decrease in the amount of social science and history books I read.  The classics stayed steady, mostly during the blissfully quiet winter months.  I think this was the year that, for the first time, I wasn't especially gripped by much of what I read, and I was clearly prioritising quantity over quality.  Bad move Ellie, bad move.
Highlights
North and South (Elizabeth Gaskell), Eat Pray Love (Elizabeth Gilbert), Frankenstein (Mary Shelley), Eating for England: The Delights and Eccentricities of the British at Table (Nigel Slater), The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas), 84, Charing Cross Road (Helene Hanff), Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Sex and Science (Mary Roach), Forbidden (Tabitha Suzuma), Pet Sematary (Stephen King), Wesley: The Story of a Remarkable Owl (Stacey O'Brien), The Snow Goose (Paul Gallico), Bedlam: London and Its Mad (Catharine Arnold), The Snow Tourist: The Search for the World's Purest, Deepest Snowfall (Charlie English), Persuasion (Jane Austen)


2011 (60 books)
Male authors: 26 / Female authors: 34
'Serious' books: 32 / 'Fluffy' books: 28
Adult books: 42 / YA and Children's books: 18
Fiction books: 39 / Non-fiction books: 21
By genre
YA and Children's: 16
Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror: 9
Literary fiction: 7
Science and Natural history: 6
Humour: 5
(Auto)Biography: 3
Social sciences: 3
Crime and Mystery: 3
Travel writing: 2
Classics: 2
Chick lit: 2
Miscellaneous non-fiction: 2
Notes
By this point we had really settled into shop life, but yet again my reading was suffering.  I hit the big library again over the winter and enjoyed some cracking science books from there, but only read three social science books, and no history at all.  My chick lit consumption was way down in 2011, but I also only read two classics all year, compared with the second set of high figures for YA and paranormal fiction.  Why is this?  I have a feeling it was a combination of laziness and the influence of so many new blogs that I leapt on during my first year of blogging without being particularly selective.  As with all new things, it took a while for the filters to kick in so that I could start paring down to the ones with the tone, information and books that really hit the spot for me.  Of course, it wasn't all bad - I also read some great books thanks to Adam's TBR Pile Challenge, which pushed me quietly towards some of the most neglected titles on my shelves, including The Princess Bride and (finally!) The Hunger Games.
Highlights
Tipping the Velvet (Sarah Waters), How Reading Changed My Life (Anna Quindlen), The Princess Bride (William Goldman), Perfume (Patrick Süskind), Atonement (Ian McEwan), Long Lankin (Lindsey Barraclough), The Shallows: How the Internet is Affecting the Way We Think, Read and Remember (Nicholas Carr), To Touch a Wild Dolphin (Rachel Smolker), Faceless Killers (Henning Mankell), The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins), Percy Jackson and the Lightning Thief (Rick Riordan)


2012 (50 books and counting)
Male authors: 24 / Female authors: 26
'Serious' books: 23 / 'Fluffy' books: 27
Adult books: 31 / YA and Children's books: 19
Fiction books: 42 / Non-fiction books: 8
By genre
YA and Children's: 18
Literary fiction: 10
Classics: 5
Humour: 5
Sci-fi, Fantasy and Horror: 3
Crime and Mystery: 3
Miscellaneous non-fiction: 2
Graphic novels: 1
Social sciences: 1
(Auto)Biography: 1
Chick lit: 1
Notes
Look at those statistics!  'Fluffy' reads outstripping more substantial ones, and my non-fiction reading outweighed by a ratio of around 4:1.  It's no wonder I've not exactly been engaging with the reading life thus far in 2012, is it?  I've read no science, natural history, travel or history books at all, and even the lone social science book was really an autobiography (Nina Here Nor There, Nick Krieger's transgender memoir)At least my classics numbers have stayed steady, thanks in large part to Hanna's LXG Challenge.  A shocking proportion of my reading this year has been YA fiction, mostly due to spells of guilt reading when I've realised how many review copies I've got stacking up.  I've counted only twelve books so far in 2012 that I've really, truly enjoyed, and those were mostly library books!  These figures are the most devastating of them all, from where I'm sitting.
Highlights
On the Island (Tracey Garvis Graves), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (Hunter S. Thompson), In Cold Blood (Truman Capote), Rant: An Oral Biography of Rant Casey (Chuck Palahniuk), V for Vendetta (Alan Moore and David Lloyd), King Solomon's Mines (H. Rider Haggard), The Sisters Brothers (Patrick deWitt), The Snow Child (Eowyn Ivey), Dearly, Departed (Lia Habel), The Perks of Being a Wallflower (Stephen Chbosky)


Conclusions

Looking at the figures year by year, it becomes very clear that my reading habits have pretty much done a full 180-degree turn since I started keeping my nerd-lists in 2006.  More importantly, as the numbers have shifted and my reading has veered further away from classics and non-fiction and further into the frothy end of the book spectrum, my satisfaction and enjoyment have waned noticeably.  I don't doubt that experimenting with new genres, and having a wider outlook thanks to the blogs I read, can only be a good thing, but if my favourite books of each year have remained very similar - non-fiction on subjects that really interest me, books about books, literary fiction, classics - then why have I allowed my reading choices to veer so far away from what I clearly love the most?  Likewise, it becomes apparent that the more reading obligations I have - challenges, numerical targets, lists, review copies - the less I'm reading of the things that really make me tick.  I'm reading to hit targets and cross off boxes rather than to learn and enjoy what my books have to offer.  The quality of my reading has been sidelined in favour of quick fixes, popular fluff, and the need to review 'often enough' on the blog.

In the last part of this Epiphany, Manifesto, Whatever You Want To Call It Thingy, I'll be pulling all these points together and working out where to go from here.  How can I start easing my reading back towards where my bookish satisfaction clearly lies?  What does that mean for the way I use my time, and for the way I think of my blogging responsibilities?  What can I do to quench my thirst for learning again and become the passionate reader I once was?

If you've stuck with this post through all the figures and notes, then congratulations!  I hope it's been interesting, or at the very least mildly entertaining.  Go have a nice lie down with a drink and a plate of cookies, you deserve it!  And if you have any thoughts to share or want to contribute to the discussion, then hit that comment box...  Until Part 3, amigos!

Sunday 18 November 2012

Bookish Epiphany Part 1: What the hell happened to my reading?

Sometimes a post really needs to be written.  On this blog there have been very few such posts, but they have all been written from the heart, with total and complete honesty, and have received some fantastic responses from other people who have found themselves in a similar predicament, or are simply reaching out with advice and kind words.  This is one of those posts – a set of posts, in fact, or it’s going to get stupidly long - because it comes from the kind of epiphany that is going to completely change the way I read.  Here’s the crux of the matter – I used to read very differently to the way I do now.  And I used to enjoy it an awful lot more.

These past few weeks have left me with plenty of time to think.  Time to reflect.  Knowing that we’re moving house soon has a tendency to do that to a person; you start to consider everything in your life in a different way as you prepare to make a fresh start.  Done right, this ends up stretching across the entire spectrum of your existence, from the objects in your room to the books on your shelves to the very way you live and work on a day to day basis.  As I’ve started to think about all these things, something has been bothering me.  My reading.  My approach to the internet and television.  The way these things work themselves into my life each day.  And so I decided to go back and study the way I used to read, the way I used to interact with media, and how I felt about that reading and that media then compared with the way I feel about it now.  


Okay, bear with me here...  To really understand how things have changed and what that means, I’ve gone right back to the moment I decided I wanted to be a literature student.  I hadn’t taken English Literature as an AS Level – looking back now, I wonder why the hell not – but during a visit to Sheffield University, standing in the middle of the literature section of their library, surrounded by tattered old Bronte and Dickens hardcovers, I realised I HAD to take those exams.  I just had to.  In my single-minded way, I volunteered to take the AS and A-level courses the same year, combining classes with extra tutoring to complete everything in time.  I loved it!  I was in my element.  Over previous years I had devoured other texts in the classroom – Macbeth, The Outsiders, Of Mice and Men, A Kestrel for a Knave, Romeo and Juliet – and now I did the same all over again, sinking deep into the exquisite language of Measure for Measure and Othello, and soaking up the cadences of Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales.  The only book I didn’t like was The Color Purple, which just didn’t click with me.  The rest?  Brilliant.

The following year I went off to York University as a combined English/History of Art student, and the love affair continued.  I adored most of my literature modules.  I ultimately decided to switch courses, but this was more to do with the way the course was structured (and staffed) than the literature itself.  It didn’t seem right to me that combined course students routinely got lower marks, got their last choice of modules, and that we were forced to spend ridiculous amounts of time (and money) on certain pet topics according to the mysterious lottery that formed our tutor allocation.  The last straw came when I got landed with a Joyce-addled, Ulysses-obsessed sociopath of a professor determined to make us splash out on his expensive version of the texts we were studying; that was it for me.  Over and out.  But before this, I HAD enjoyed, for example, John Bowen’s lively lectures on Dickens, and listening to John Barrell (or ‘Santa’ as we knew him) passionately extolling the virtues of his favourite literary greats. I picked apart one of Keats’ Odes for a tutorial and spent a seminar debating whether Fanny Price was, in fact, a ‘wet lettuce’ or actually just a nice person.  It was great!

In between days at the library and nights frantically writing essays, fuelled by chocolate, Red Bull and cigarettes (a habit I’ve put behind me, kiddies, before you gasp and tut), I kept my personal education ticking over in other ways.  I used the university library to track down books on topics I wanted to know more about, just for the hell of it (a photographic exploration of flamenco, for example, and lots of books relating to consumerism and marketing).  In the evening I’d switch over to documentaries on literature and history on BBC4, watch amazing movies just because they were there, and geek out big-time with my then-boyfriend Adam ploughing through box sets of Charmed, Mythbusters and Stargate SG-1.  And I’d read!  By the river, while Adam was playing video games, in the college cafe, wherever.  It was what I did.

Now, fast forward to 2012.  What exactly do I do with my time now?  Well, I work, yes.  But that really takes up no more of my time than cramming for tutorials or reading swathes of criticism ever did.  Less, in fact, since technically my working day is basically seven hours of sitting doing whatever I want, punctuated by admin.  Unless it’s a REALLY busy day, there are only so many sales, customer requests, questions, shelf-filling duties and so on to be done.  I’ll freely admit that I find it harder to read in public now; I get distracted far more easily, perhaps because of my tendency to keep one eye on my customers and one eye on my book.  Instead I usually take the lazy way out and allow myself to get pulled down the rabbit hole that is the internet, where I can spend an entire day trawling Pinterest boards for fun stuff, or article hop for three hours, or skip from blog to blog until I finally hit a distant end point, only pausing for breaks every time a customer approaches or it’s time to make more coffee.  It’s just too easy.

And what about the rest of my time?  My mornings, until we leave at 9:15am to get to the shop?  My evenings, when we get home at about 5:30pm and start winding down?  Well...  I do try to read a little in the morning.  Quite often I’ll sit on my bed, or on my bedroom floor, sipping coffee and munching a chocolate chip muffin for breakfast, waking up gently with the help of caffeine and my book.  This can topple anything from five to twenty-five pages or so, I suppose, before it’s time to get off my ass and finish getting ready.  On other days, however, I’ll turn on my laptop and catch up on a few blog posts from the last 24 hours, or watch something on iPlayer, or video-hop on YouTube. 

After work the possibilities are even more tempting – but no matter how often I tell myself that tonight I’ll settle down and read for a few hours before bed (at university I would often read until I fell asleep), or get everything done so that I can watch a great movie, this never actually happens.  Part of this, I’m sure, is due to the change in my routine.  At university I regularly went to bed at 2am and didn’t get up until well gone 9am for breakfast, which clearly isn’t good form when you’re working.  These days it’s more like up at 6:30am and in bed by 10:30pm – but all that really means is that my time has shifted slightly, right?  So why do I always wind up watching the same comedy episodes over and over on E4, or getting dragged back down that internet rabbit hole, instead of doing what I really want to be doing?  Every night I hit 10pm and think, “What have I done with my evening?  Where the hell did that time go?” 

Okay, this is getting rather long, so consider this Part 1 of my Reading Epiphany.  The next part(s) will get to what I really wanted to talk about – that is, what my reading used to be, how it has shifted, and why, and what I need to do about it to get my passion for books back again. 

Thanks for reading this far – and do comment if any of this sounds even remotely familiar, it’s always reassuring to know you’re not the only one!