i don’t remember being an avid reader as a child. i don’t think i ever disliked reading or protested when i was required to read for school but i have no memories of staying awake all night reading a book underneath my covers or anything like that. however, in the past two years, something has happened. now, all i want to do is read.
i like to read everything: popular fiction, classics, young adult novels, nonfiction (on almost any topic), children’s books, whatever. if there are words on pages that i can turn, i would probably read it. this new hobby of mine really conflicts with my outgoing, social persona because it’s hard to hang out with other people while i have my nose in a book. and it’s hard to hold conversations with other people when they have not read the book with which i am currently engrossed.
in an attempt to solve these minor problems of mine, i began doing two things. the first is that i started reading in public places. this public place usually serves coffee, has a good spot to sit, and offers some people watching for mid-chapter breaks. this habit evolved into having “mutual quiet time” with friends where a friend and i will meet somewhere and will chat for a minute over a coffee and then proceed to read our own books or do our own work. our mid-chapter people watching breaks usually coincide and involve conversation and sometimes a beer or wine follows the coffee. social time + reading = mutual quiet time!
second, in hopes of finding mature conversation topics more easily, i began reading the newspaper. i don’t even know how to begin explaining the disastrous situation in which i have put myself. i am currently reading 3 books at the same time; i have a shelf of 20ish books that i thought i’d read “during the summer” and my list of books that i’d like to read seems to be growing very rapidly. and now i’m going to add a daily newspaper to this equation? i’m not even working right now and i don’t have time to read everything i want to read — what will i do when the school year starts again and i’m legitimately busy with gainful employment (hopefully)?! think of how many words that is! and no, i know i don’t need to read every single word of every section of the paper to know what is going on in the world but it’s hard not to! rookie mistake? and i can’t imagine giving up reading books in favor of only the newspaper… i can’t even wrap my head around that. i’d have to get really good at crossword puzzles…
if i read everything i want to read then i’ll know so many things and will have so many thoughts about all the things that i know but i will have spent all of my time learning it and thinking it and thus, losing touch with my friends so i’ll have no one to discuss my ideas with…. that would be sad. but it’s also unlikely that that exact scenario will play out in the real world, right….? i guess in the grand scheme of life and its problems, i’m not very close to a life-or-death emergency so i can probably calm down. i’ll go relax with one my 8769 books.
x!
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some of my favorite reading spots:
arlington, va: northside social (clarendon)
richmond, va: lamplighter (the fan) and urban farmhouse (shockoe slip)
new york city: v bar (soho) and sit & wonder (brooklyn)
my version of the real world 