No, not literally…
I know how to read. I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be able to write if I couldn’t read… right? But maybe I never actually learned how to read. Maybe I just memorized what a bunch of words look like.
I do like to read. No… I think it’s fair to say I love to read. Recently, however, I have slacked off on reading. I have so many books, most of which I’ve read in the past. But I’ve also got a lot of books on my shelves that I’ve bought intending to read that I just haven’t touched.
And I have to remind myself of that whenever I’m at Barnes & Noble and I see another book that I want to buy. If I’m not making time to read the unread books I have at home, what makes me think I’m going to read something new?
There are even a few books that I’ve begun… months ago… that I just never got around to finishing.
For example: I loved the TV show The Passage, based on a series of books by Justin Cronin. When the first season ended, and then the show was canceled, I wanted to read the books so I could find out how the story properly ends. I got roughly 200 pages into the first book. Inexplicably, I stopped reading it.
It’s not that the book was uninteresting. I still want to finish reading it. And I still want to read the two books that follow it. I just haven’t.
Who has some advice for finding that motivation to read? Because I want to want to read. For whatever reason, at the moment… I just don’t. Maybe this all ties in to some of the things I wrote about the other day.
In 2019 I set a goal on Goodreads to read 24 books. I figured two per month wasn’t out of the question. I’ve done more in a year. I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t even crack double digits in the year.
So far, in 2020, I’m batting zero.
From where I’m sitting, across the room from all the books, I can count at least 70 books that I want to read. Plenty to keep me busy. Why can’t I get motivated?
I claim that I love to write… that I want to write. And I know how crucial reading is to the ability to write. So why can’t I get motivated?
Feature Photo by Jessica Ruscello on Unsplash
The Confusing Middle 
What are your other activities now? Are you getting out of the house? I would say set a timer and read for at least half hour. Start twice a week. Soon, you will be so engrossed in the story you’re reading, the timer won’t matter.
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Thanks for the tip. I’ve set a reminder on my phone that I’ll hopefully follow through with.
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Here’s my trick for follow through on reading when I am in the kind of space you are right now.
Gather a long list of even remotely interesting free ebooks, the more the better – so you have lots of choices and guilt isn’t a factor if you don’t finish. (My even remotely interesting list is currently 23 kindle pages long, which is good because right now I have a picky appetite.)
Take each book for a trial run, reading only one or two chapters. Move on to the next, and then the next, until one grabs your interest enough to pull you in, (like the most delicious meal you ever ate, you’re too full to finish but you do anyway and wish you had room for more) and you can’t help but keep reading. This usually happens for me at bedtime, hoping to be lulled to sleep with the new book I expect to be dull, reluctantly putting it down at 3 am (or later)
Keep “taste-testing” books until you find one you love. Don’t make yourself finish a “meal” you don’t love. Once you “know” what a great meal feels like, finding new books and reading will be a pleasure not a chore.
There’s this book blogger who talks about free books – you should download everything mentioned, for tasting, like Julia Roberts in “Runaway Bride”, to figure out what you like.
Discover fine dining, be hooked for life.
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Thanks for this!
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What if you DONT know how to write and this whole time you’ve just been using “speech to text” software and none of us know it?!!?
I’m kind of in the same boat though – like I want to read more, I really do!!! I have a whole list on my phone of books to read but I just don’t seek them out. It’s not like it’s a horrible inconvenience to go to the library and pick books up. They will even deliver them to the library I choose! I do it for books all the time for my kids. But I just can’t get into it for myself. No idea why.
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Seriously, the library is magical.
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I know! I love it!!
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