I’ve been thinking a lot lately about reading, and its place in my life. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how it was being a voracious reader as a kid that made me want to be a writer, and about how these days I write a lot more than I used to, but in “olden days” I used to read a whole lot more than I do now. I miss reading. I miss that feeling of diving into a book and not coming out for hours and hours, finally surfacing blurry-eyed and satisfied out of story world into the “real” world, ready to dive into another story.
Reading used to be my main form of entertainment, my go-to activity whenever I could sneak it in. But then life got a lot more complicated and full of other distractions, and my reading time evaporated. (One of the things I truly hated about grad school was how it destroyed my ability to read for pleasure. And one of the few silver linings about breastfeeding both boys was that I could sometimes still read with one hand, so even if I wasn’t sleeping, at least I was reading.) I still read now, but if I’m lucky I average around 2 books a month (I’m not including all the other forms of reading that I do all the time—everything from Facebook to blogs to online articles to magazines to unpublished manuscripts that I’m critiquing.) Since I belong to a book group, and we read one book (almost always a non-genre fiction book) per month, and that accounts for about half my book reading every month. If the stars align I’ll also squeeze in at least one other book each month, sometimes a non-fiction book, sometimes a genre novel. And then every once in awhile I get on a reading tear (usually when I’m on vacation or hooked on a particularly easy-to-blow-through series) and read 2 or 3 non-book group books per month. But that’s still not that many, and it feels like far fewer than I used to read.
So I was doing some math, just for fun, on the way to book group the other night. And the math blew my mind by giving me some actual data to play with. Let me ‘splain. Going with nice round numbers, let’s say I read around 25 books a year. I’m 42 now, so again going for the nice round numbers, let’s say I’m blessed to live another 50 years to the ripe old age of 92 and still able to read books that whole time. (It could happen—my Grandma is 90 and still reading up a storm.) That means, at my current rate of reading, I will be able to read approximately 1,250 more books before I die. (Yes, I know that the older I get, the more “free” time I will probably recoup and be able to use for reading, so it’s very possible that my reading rate will go up as I age. But for the sake of simplicity I am going to ignore that possibility for now. I’m also willfully ignoring the possibility that I will die sooner—or later, God willing—than 92.)
1,250 books. On the one hand, that sure does sound like a lot of books. Over a thousand books! How delightful! There are so many things I could explore! On the other hand, I probably have well over 1,250 books just sitting around on shelves in my house (yeah, well, I have maybe a little bit of a hoarding problem when it comes to books. Shut up.) Now, most of those are books I’ve read (or Josh has read) at some point, but I have a significant enough pile of unread books (especially after going to World Fantasy Con for 3 years now, and getting a huge pile of free books each time) that I’ve had to expand from one “TBR” (To Be Read) shelf stacked double deep, to two shelves. I haven’t counted recently (purely out of anxiety), but I’m guesstimating that I probably have about 80-100 unread books awaiting my attention. (Probably 60-70 of those are genre books.) But given that I only read about a dozen or so non-book group books each year, getting through that pile of TBR books is going to take me something like 8 years. 8 YEARS! Out of my 50! The math kills me.
One thing’s for certain: if there are “only” 1,250 books left in my life, I should probably start being a whole lot more choosy about what I allow into my reading life. But how do I decide what’s worthwhile ahead of time? Even flawed books are sometimes worth it, for a variety of reasons. I am determined at least stop being compulsive about finishing every book I start—if I’m not enjoying it after the first few chapters or 100 pages or so, I need to give it up without guilt and let some other book take its place. (This is especially important with all the non-fiction books I consume. Sometimes just reading half the book is enough and I can move on.)
Clearly the only other thing to do here if I really do want to read more than 1,250 books before I die is to radically step up consumption. As it is I already watch hardly any TV or movies, so that shouldn’t compete. And I don’t play video games (although I think I’m about to get temporarily sucked in to the new Star Wars: The Old Republic MMO, yikes!) I do spend a little time surfing the internet, I’ll admit, but in reality, not THAT much. So why don’t I have more reading time in my life? Perhaps it’s out of guilt, out of the desire to be more “productive” with my leisure time (because there’s always more work to do, be it housework or writing work or web work or whatever). Perhaps it’s just that I’ve gotten out of the habit. I *want* to read more. I especially want to read more fantasy/sci-fi genre books, because a) that’s always been my favorite and b) that’s what I’m writing, and I feel I should make at least a half-hearted attempt to stay vaguely aware of my field.
So this I vow: I am going to try to spend more of my evening downtime reading. I am going to spend more of my weekend time reading. I’m going to see if I can stretch to three books a month instead of two. I’m going to stop feeling guilty about reading instead of doing other things, or only letting myself read when everything else is done. And I’m going to read whatever I damn well please, and if it isn’t pleasing me, I’m going to stop reading it.
Now excuse me, I’m done with blogging, I need to go read.