First, for anyone who may have stumbled across this blog, it’s obvious that it’s been dormant.
I haven’t published anything since December of 2021. It was about the same time that I wrote the last post on my personal site, too. So, what happened? Where have I been?
New job.
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Promotion to a newer job.
+ Addition of a real DJ gig (unexpected, I know. I’m no longer the Unheard of DJ but I digress)
= I STOPPED READING.
Okay, sure, I’m not the first person to stop reading. But to me, it feels like I’ve been suffering from some rare, undiagnosed affliction. I have an MFA in fiction. I worked as an editor. The act of reading could be a part of my parasympathetic nervous system at this point. When I say I STOPPED READING it means I’m not the person I used to be anymore.
There was one other time when this happened.
As a child I read all the time. I earned the chance to go to pizza parties in school (thanks, Scholastic). I read and reread. Then in the sixth grade, the volume got turned up on “assigned” reading and instead of just increasing how much I read so that I could still embrace the freedom of finding my own stories, I stopped. I felt defeated, I guess. The books assigned in school were fine—arguably important, and I read them. But it was a long time (until my junior year in high school) until I really started to read of my own volition again.
What’s different about this particular bout of non-reading is that I’m not alone. The Atlantic wrote about books to help you fall in love with reading again. A friend shared that her bookwormish mother stopped reading when she had knee surgery. The pandemic, it appears, has affected readers, as evidenced by how many publications have also written their own “books to fall in love with” articles similar to the Atlantic’s. In one of those, Vox cites a Gallup poll measuring Americans’ declining reading habits:
U.S. adults are reading roughly two or three fewer books per year than they did between 2001 and 2016.
gallup.com
I’m reading 15 books fewer. I feel truly mortified.
A witness to my angst, my husband forwarded me the ‘Reading Glasses’ podcast hoping they would have some advice for me. And they did! In particular, these were the episodes that coaxed my Reader’s heart out of hiding.
But it wasn’t their advice that really sparked something in me: it was just the fact that they read! It was someone else talking about the book they were reading that unearthed memories of my own favorite reveals or lyric passages. I needed to know that there were other readers out there besides me.
I realized, in my daily life I’m surrounded by people who, at a minimum don’t talk about it, but more than likely, don’t read.
But do we need to be in the company of those who share our interests to continue to engage in them?
No, of course not. But in a list of things that were holding me back (longer hours at work, constant home renovations, relearning my way around town), the reality that I also wasn’t in the zeitgeist of reading culture made it that much easier to let the practice fade away.
But finding of new community of readers sparked something in me. I reorganized my personal library and decided to commit to finishing a book rather than falling on the old habit of reading multiple books at once. Then it happened. I did finish a book, and another, and I found myself talking about books with friends again. Eventually, I didn’t feel the small pangs of guilt (like heartburn after eating a saucy, gooey, cheesy pizza) every time someone asked what I was reading. I could say with certainty that yes, I, the Unsanctioned Book Influencer, was reading a book.
And if I’m reading again that means I’ll have more songs and side dishes to help you decide what to read next.
Thank you for your patience, dear reader. Your Uncertified Bilbiotherapist has returned.
The Perfect Book Experience 