When I was younger, I was an avid reader. While my older brother learned how to read, I would be right next to him, trying to learn as well. I used to take pride in reading many books. My favorite book ever is Flowers for Algernon. My favorite series is The Lord of the Rings. I even trudged through the entire Harry Potter series just to say I read it even though I greatly dislike the series. (But its rides at Universal Orlando are cool, mind you.)
Nowadays, I groan when my textbook list for a class requires novels. I honestly can’t tell you how I survived my Honors philosophy class from last semester, because never finished a single book for that class.
Through high school and into college, I never put much effort in assigned readings unless they grabbed my interest. The only stories I finish seemed to share many similar traits: they are set in some recent historical era, first person, characters with no outstanding qualities (normal, I’d call them) and written with very straightforward but descriptive diction. Stories that don’t contain these traits I stay away from.
And I can specifically name several types of stories or writings that I stay away from.
Shakespeare makes me gag. Philosophical conversations are too lengthy and abstract that my head physically hurts afterwards. Inverted sentence structure is confusion at its finest. Small text removes years off my life.
And don’t even get me started on poems.
A disdain for reading is ironic to me, as someone that writes and will be taking journalism classes in the future. Good writing doesn’t just come from a writing manual; it comes from observing how other people write as well. So you’d think I’d be an avid reader as well, of a wide variety of texts.
It turns out I’m more of an avid judger of books as well. I judge books by their cover.
It’s like light switch was turned off inside my head. When I try to switch it back on, I don’t realize that the light has burned out, but don’t make any move to change the bulb.
I acknowledge it fully. Sometimes when I’m speaking with someone, a book will be brought up. “Have you ever read (insert book title?” I will most likely shake my head no. It hurts even more when it’s one of those “classic” books, that everyone talks about.
Maybe it’s because college is a ton of work and a struggle to manage time. Maybe it's because technology has taken so much of my time. I’m not a novel reader, but I’m good at reading Twitter, Reddit, and whatever news sites I peruse. I finally finished one college assigned novel last week, but the only thing that kept me turning the pages was, because it adhered to what I like in my books: a memoir set a few decades ago, written by a journalist so that its diction was clear, and it had normal people going through hardship.
I’d love to read the classics I missed, but I feel like I’ve missed many. 1984 has suddenly resurged, so perhaps this a proper time to read it. I still usually go to the library whenever I need to leave the house or the dorm to complete any assignments, so libraries are important to me.
It saddens me sometimes to remember my forgotten love of reading, but it almost seemed inevitable due to the rise of smart technology and the lesser importance of the library, since we have all the resources we could get from there in our literal hands. But time cannot change the stories these novels tell, so hopefully I can still find time to discover those stories that I haven’t been told yet.
