As
of late, I have been thinking about how my patterns of reading have changed,
and not changed, over the years. Reading is my lifelong hobby. I have almost
always been consistent reader. Yet there have been times where I must admit
that I have gone into lulls. Despite what I label as “lulls,” there have never really
been very long stretches of time when I did not read.
However,
there were times that, like most readers, I would go into shorter slumps. These
have been stretches of a few months, during which I did not read much. Of
course, during periods when my education preoccupied my time, my reading would
slow to a crawl and sometimes stop altogether. I will admit, however, that at other
times I neglected my studies in lieu of doing some reading for pleasure.
There
have been reasons other than education for these short reading slumps. I recall that when I first discovered the
Internet, I did not read books for a couple of months. It was during this time
when I wondered if I would ever begin heavy reading again. Ultimately, the
allure of the digital world was, in the end, no match for my persistent desire
to delve into the intricate details and ideas contained in real books. After a
few months, I returned to my lifetime hobby.
These
days, with reading time as a premium, these non-reading lulls have entirely
disappeared from my life. Due to this scarcity of reading time I have not gone
into a slump for years. Instead, I hunger for more hours to read.
The
other thing that I do now that I never did in previous years is read two books
simultaneously. I recall that when I attempted this years ago, I would
invariably neglect one book for the other. The more interesting tome would get
the most attention, and the less interesting one would be so neglected. Thus, it
became impossible to maintain a coherent train of thought on the neglected
book’s contents. Once again, that problem has disappeared, and I find that I
can easily apportion my time between almost any pair of books. If I am going a
little slower on one, as opposed to the other, I will usually just speed up on
the one, after I complete the more interesting work. Though my ongoing plan is
to read one fiction and one non-fiction book simultaneously, it does not always
work out that way. I often find myself reading two fiction or two non-fiction
books together.
My
reading patterns have changed quite a lot over the years. Obviously, external
factors have played a good part in this. I wonder how they will be changed when
I look back again in twenty to thirty years. I think however, that it is likely
that I will still be reading as much as time permits, which will not be enough.
