Wednesday, January 13

Reading habits

First up I just wanted to say Happy New Year to everyone! I'm sending some lovely big (sunny) waves from New Zealand and I hope that 2010 has got off to a stellar start for everyone. Right, now that I've caused you all to hate me by reminding you that I'm in the middle of summer while a lot of you are buried in winter, let me turn my attention to the post at hand!

The topic this week is about movies, music or books and while half of me was tempted to blog about UP, which I finally saw yesterday, I finally decided that no good could come from letting the world know that I am a complete and utter cry baby. Yes people I pretty much bawled through the whole movie much to the amusement of my kids! So, anyway, since I'm not going to talk about that I thought I'd talk about books instead. Well, actually not books so much as reading habits.

Once upon a time when I was a younger girl I used to read three to four books a week and was often caught standing in the kitchen with my nose in a book and the dinner burning. But then I hit my thirties and not only did I have children but I finally got my first book contract and somewhere along the way my reading habit got severely dented, which was when I decided to keep track of what I read.

The first year I did it, I put the books on the sidebar of my blog and was horrified to discover that in one year I had only read 30 odd books. The next year I made a resolution to read a book a week (and I discovered Goodreads!!!!) and two years later I'm pleased to say that I'm still going strong. I don't know if I'll ever get back to reading three books a week like I did in my teens and twenties but I'm so pleased I made the conscious effort to re-find the time to indulge in my favorite habit. So I'm curious if this has happened to anyone else? Have you suddenly lost your reading time and if so what did you do to reclaim it?

5 comments:

Wendy Toliver said...

I've found that my reading schedule directly coincides with my work schedule. I get the most reading done while on vacation. And sometimes all I get to read are picture books (to my kids), but that's better than nothing!

Gerb said...

Even though I never go anywhere without a book, reading in snatches of five or ten minutes at a time is about all I get in most days. Except on vacation. Then I devour books. On our one-week vacation over the holidays, I read The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Hush,Hush and The Splendor Falls. It was heaven. But it barely dented my TBR pile!

Sara Hantz said...

Yeah, it's a bummer that other things get in the way of reading unlike when you're younger. I do LOADS of reading on holiday and also, like Gerb I snatch time here and there... like at the dentist, or the hairdressers.... I take a book with me wherever I'm going that might involve a small wait and I try and get there early to give me more reading time!!

Melissa Walker said...

I just spent a week in Rio and finally read BREAKING DAWN, but I brought 5 books with me! And only finished one (it was the heaviest though so I was glad to donate it to Rio!). :) I have a LOT of trouble finding the time to read. The pile is HUGE.

Amanda Ashby said...

Wendy - gotta love picture books! Actually I now have a crafty plan and I've started reading my fav books to my kids. We just finished The Wizard of Earthsea and it was so cool for me to re-read it and for them to hear it aloud all at the same time!!!

Gerb - Oh I hear you on the towering TBR pile! This won't help but my new obsession is Graceling and Fire by Kristin Cashore - if you loved Hunger Games and haven't read these books then I can definitely recommend them!!!!

Sara - unless of course there is a jigsaw puzzle around....

Melissa - it seems we all suffer from the same problem. And eeek, I only ever read Twilight and couldn't make myself read the other books. I suppose I must at some stage!