I love to read, but I find it hard to work into my schedule. Which is not to say my schedule is “full”, I just mean there aren’t natural times when I’m likely to read.
When I was in elementary school, I would read in school when I was supposed to be doing school work, read while I walked home sometimes, read until supper, read until bed, and read on the way back to school the next morning where I would get three more books (I was in Grade 3 or 4 as I recall).
Later, I would read on buses while commuting, but that was always a crapshoot as to whether I would feel nauseated or not.
But lunchtimes? That was ME time. Grab some food, ignore the world, and read. A friend of mine that I met at french training was really struggling because he had to drive to the school. Normally, he would read on the bus in the morning for almost 40 minutes on his way to work, plus over lunch, and then 40 minutes on his way home. He had LOTS of time. Once he started French? He was basically down to lunch hour. It was driving him bonkers.
When I’m at the office, I drive to work so reading-by-commute is out. I do read at lunches sometimes, but I also often use that time to read news articles more than books.
These days, my book reading often goes in binges. I rarely have a book “on the go” so to speak…I’m either reading intensely or I’m not reading at all. We bought books for Jacob on the weekend, and I need to read three of them for mature themes and content before he does. Today, I plowed through the last 3/4 of I Am Number Four by Pittacus Lore. I’ve seen the movie and practically fell asleep; the book was much better, and while it is about war, there is some normalcy in there too. I don’t know that Jacob will enjoy the book, but I’m fine with him giving it a try. He read Maximum Ride by James Patterson, and there are some similar but less fantastical elements. More sci-fi than fantasy for this one.
But I took most of the evening off from my to do list to just sit and read. Yeah, sure, I was burning some files from one media to another, did a couple of chores, wrote this post, caught up on some discussions I’m part of online. But mostly I just sat here and read while the other stuff hummed along. And I finished the book. I feel like it took me longer than normal though…440 pages in total, and I was already about 100 pages in when I started reading tonight, but it still took me over 3 hours. But I definitely zoned out in there. Want to know the weird part? I did it while sitting at my desk. I didn’t even move to a comfy chair. I guess that means the story was engaging enough that I didn’t even notice! 🙂
Today I choose to read for pleasure.
What choices are you making?
