Reading As A Habit, And Why I’m Going Back To It.

For the longest time, all anyone ever knew me for was that I was the girl who loves to read and has a pretty impressive collection of books on my shelf. And it was true, too. My parents have always encouraged me to build my reading habits, and up until I was nineteen, we’d make monthly trips to book fairs or book stores to add more books to my shelf.

Now, whether I’ve read all of them is not the point here. There are a few books that I am yet to read, but the point is that I’ve always had an interest in reading books. But as life goes, we do have to sort out our priorities. Sadly, reading took a backseat in my life. I did read other things when I couldn’t read books– manga and Webtoons, thread-fics on Twitter, some brilliantly written fan-fics on Ao3, game-related lore on Wiki. It may sound random, but trust me. My love for reading never really went away.

It has always stuck around in some form or another.

In the last two years, I’ve seen people post about their reading goals, and how they’ve read over 30 books in the span of 4 months or less. It made me feel like such an impostor for even saying that I love to read. I thought about how happy it would make me to read new books, and how it had influenced my love for writing. Reading does, in fact, make a person very patient and open to new perspectives. My curiosity has always led me tor read more books, but it wasn’t until I’d spent a few years not being able to read any books at all, that I realized how dearly I missed it.

Of course, I prefer fiction over non-fiction because it allows me to escape reality. But in a way, I think reading is what has helped me hold on to whimsy in my life. It has given me the ability to actually expand my imagination and has made me a better writer in so many ways. It has also inspired my artworks and my taste in music. I can’t explain it, but you can tell if a person loves to read by looking at their work. I’ve tried to keep up with things my friends have written over the years, as well.

In the last few months, I have started reading books, again. It has been a while. At one point, I used to read books in a single sitting. But ever since I’ve taken on more responsibilities in life, I haven’t really been able to do that. In fact, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to read books in a single sitting ever again. But lately, as I’ve been re-reading ‘The Hunger Games’ trilogy for better effect after reading ‘The Ballad Of Songbirds And Snakes’ and ‘Sunrise On The Reaping’, I’ve realized how my love for reading has been reignited because there is so much detail in those books, and it’s all so well-connected, you can’t help but develop a deep appreciation for the world-building and the story-telling.

It’s not just a love for reading, though. My ability to read and re-read books has allowed me to look into and understand details that you’d miss if you weren’t actually trying to find them there. Reading is always political, if you ask me. In fact, if you look back far enough, you’ll find that writing originated from a need to escape reality, and eventually it translated to reading. And in turn, that expanded to people expressing their views in literature, in cleverly disguised metaphors and allusions. You’ll always find people restricting some form of media to block access to information. Well, a lot of writers found a loophole to that by making people read their work which explained the situation in ways a direct approach would not have.

Going back to building my reading habits has helped me understand situations that I might have overlooked in some way or another.

Of course, I don’t expect everyone to love reading the same way I do, but it’s important to develop reading as a habit. Any form of reading is better than nothing at all. If you’re someone who likes to read, I’d love to know if you have any books to recommend. I’m always looking for something new to read, and I haven’t really had much interest in the titles or synopses of any of the recent books in the market. I hope that will change at some point, though.

Anyway, I don’t have a reading goal for the year yet because I don’t know how much reading I’ll be able to get into my schedule. But I do hope it’s more than I read in the last year, at least.

Pick up a book soon, if you haven’t already.

Cheerio! Xx

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Yours truly,
The Shubhster.

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~Featured Image by Blaz Photo on Unsplash