Getting back into reading
In Year 8 in high school I was a library assistant. I still hadn't found my friendship group yet and I was a very socially awkward 12 year old. So I retreated to the library, partly so I didn't look quite so sad sat on my own, but mostly to get out of the cold. I can't quite remember how it happened but the librarian gave me a shiny badge and I spent my lunch breaks putting away books, neatening shelves and getting to read on the comfy chairs next to a warm radiator. I perused all manner of things, but found myself drawn to Jacqueline Wilson's colourful book covers, Goosebumps' creepy thrills and, of course, the magic of Harry Potter.
Then I went to university and my love of reading seemed to evaporate. When you have a stack of 7 philosophy books you need to reference for one essay, it kills quite a lot of the enjoyment. Learning the Dewey decimal system early on served me well at least, and I had no problem locating the many books I and my friends needed to reference. The first two years weren't so bad and I enjoyed reading Aristotle, Descartes, Kant, even muddling through the archaic prose of Locke felt tricky but rewarding. Third year, however, sapped any enjoyment from philosophy for me - I still shudder at the incomprehensible Heidegger and our equally incomprehensible course professor.
It's not so much that I don't love reading anymore, but that I don't know what to read. I bought a Kindle a few years ago and filled it with books I thought I'd like, but apart from Sherlock Holmes, none of them gripped me the way Harry Potter did as a teen. A despairing amount felt clunky and badly written. My husband recommended The Hobbit and I got a good way through, but I've since abandoned the attempt. Reading it gave me no pleasure and felt like a task, much like my university coursework. It just didn't interest me.
I'm nothing if not persistent, though. I'm going camping over the bank holiday weekend and, more broadly, I want to spend less time doom-scrolling on my phone. So in the last week I've jail broken the Kindle, cleared off the old, doomed reading list and refreshed it anew. I wandered around Waterstones, signed up to BookBub and browsed my local library's BorrowBox app for recommendations. I have some new books to try and I'm looking forward to falling in love with reading again.