I'm Reading Less Than I Used To

[davedoty]

I can see from many of the discussion threads that many of the posters here aren't having the same problem I am.  Or perhaps in some cases, are simply younger and haven't had it yet.  But I think it's a common enough phenomenon that there may be people around these parts that can relate.

In my teens and twenties, I was one of the most voracious readers I knew in my very intellectual circle of friends.  While I read plenty of fun "crap" like Superman comics or Dragonlance novels or whatever, I also almost always had a volume of Joyce or Dostoevsky or Kerouac under my arm for pleasure reading.

Over the last decade (basically since I finally left grad school and went out into the post-academic world), my reading of substance has been on a steady decline.  It's been steady for long enough that's it's clearly not just a cyclical thing, or realistic downward adjustment to a non-academic setting.  I seem to be on-course to becoming a non-reader.  Considering that most of my reading is comics and the internet, I'm already there by a certain standard.

Needless to say, this absolutely horrifies me.  I love watching highbrow television like Mad Men, but the thought that this might be the intellectual highlight of my life from now on is just unacceptable to me.  Trying to rush out and buy a copy of Don Quixote or Remembrance of Things Past and force myself into my younger self's habits haven't worked.  I've had a string of unread books over those years.  Even if I'm able to make it through one of those books as a endurance exercise, it's no way to pick back up a sustainable habit.

My latest idea is that I need to effectively retrain myself in this behavior.  To that end, I'm trying to read books that fall into one (or preferably both) of two categories:

1) books that I have read and loved in the past.  Hopefully the nostalgia factor and the fact that I already know they are, or at least were, my cup of tea will help keep me moving.

2) books that fall into that grey area between Great Literature and lightweight fun reads.  Shelley, Poe, Stoker, Wells, that kind of thing.

To that end, I'm starting with The Count of Monte Cristo.  A favorite of high-school me, and many of my friends back then as well.  And, if memory serves, enough adventure flourishes to be a fun read as well.

Has anyone else here wrestled with this aspect of middle age?  Have you overcome it?  Any advice on rekindling my love of reading?

Speaking of "kindle", albeit another meaning, I do have both a smartphone and tablet computer for reading on.  I'm reading Count on my phone, using the Eucalyptus app.

[CryptoMe]

I have found that audiobooks work for me in this regard.

My lack of "reading" seems to be related to a lack of time. Any time I have that is suitable for sit-down reading gets used to catch up with technical reading. If I want to unwind, then I would rather vege in front of the TV than read. Also, there are tonnes of little household chores that can be done in front of the TV, so that is actually the "responsible" choice for me. 

However, since discovering audiobooks, my "reading" has returned to almost high-school levels (my reading peak). The reason is that I can listen to audiobooks and still do all of those afore-mentioned chores plus some that can't be done in front of the TV. I can also listen while running errands, commuting, and exercising. So, that is how I now ingest all of my pleasure books. I get lots of classics from my local library. Some books can be more difficult to plow through in audio format, requiring a lot of rewinding and relistening, but once you get the hang of that, its just great.

If your issue is lack of time, then I would highly recommend you try audiobooks.

[Spindaddy]

I feel your pain man as I'm in a similar boat. I stopped reading anything that requires me to put too much effort into considering the text in front of me. Some days it worries me... like I'm too deep into the daily grind to think anymore.

I've found the older I get, the less time I have for either depressing 'doomsday' novels predicting the downward spiral of the US or 'highbrow' literature where I have to think about every nuance of what I'm reading, study the symbols, devices and take the time to appreciate all the references the authors is throwing at me. Even worse, anything that even remotely gets a bit preachy hits the recycle bin.

I'm too tired, too busy and well.... too old for that highbrow nonsense.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I didn't have a whole hell of a lot to worry about. These days... I got mortgages, bills, deadlines, responsibilities... the worst deadlines I had as a kid were to write ten page papers. Even when I hit the corporate world and got married, stuff wasn't too bad, but it began to get tougher. Toss in a kid, more responsibilities with the job, some rough personal drama, a brush or two with death... after awhile all that stuff piles up on you and you are wandering around like Atlas. When I want to relax, I pick up something lighthearted and fun where I can be entertained.

Life is tough. Whether you are riding high on a pile a wealth or grinding gears inside the machine somewhere, its not easy being green. It's hard to tell yourself you are relaxing with some weighty tome when 90 minutes previous you pulled over on the highway to staunch the flow of blood from your nose because you are stressing about the deadline looming, your next review or something equally stressful. Picking up a book where you have to work at enjoying it fully after having been stressed out for the last 12 to 14 hours.... for me, that's not happening anymore.

A lack of time is the biggest culprit for me. I find that I still love to read, but epic novels or literature where I feel like I need a pipe, some brandy and lounge full of people to bandy the ideas back and forth.... those things are gone along with my Lego's, starwars figures, underroos and varsity jacket. When I read now, I'm brandishing a staff with Harry Dresden or telling Sookie she's asking for trouble or I'm fishing out my glock to cover some random ex-cia/fbi/nsa agent in the latest secret agent book. When I'm reading now, it's gotta be something I can grab a chapter of here and there while I'm running between places or right before I go to bed.

Audio fiction? It's my new drug. My commute is a solid hour of road raging assholes. To survive, I'm mainlining PodCastle and EscapePod on my way to work in the morning and on the waoy home at night. Any drive over 15 minutes is when I start queuing the minis.

On the nights where the kid is in bed and the wifey is out with some friends I guess I could pick up something to stimulate the old noggin, but more and more I find myself wanting to create my own stories. Tell my own tales. Sure, they are horrible scribblings of a madman, but when it comes to entertainment, the joy I get from me scribbling a bunch of bullshit on a computer screen is vastly more entertaining than anything the TV can throw at me. Well, except when Mythbusters is blowing shit up in the name of science. If I can have mythbusters on in the background while I'm writing, beer in front of me with some cheese and crackers... I'm in frickin heaven.

Crap... this brain vomit got way too long.... almost out of lunch break.

In closing man, don't get down on yourself for not reading the stuff you used to devour or for not taking the time to rise above our monkey and lizard brains. Stuff happens. If you really want to excercise the brain, then just make the time for it and force yourself to smell them intellectual flowers.

[Listener]

My problem with reading as much as I used to is that now I'm falling asleep in bed, while I'm reading, a lot sooner than I used to. I used to be able to read 50 printed pages (or about 100 Kindle pages) in about an hour, but now I can barely make it through a single chapter.

I'm only 33, but it makes me feel ANCIENT that I can't stay up and read anymore.

[Bdoomed]

Oh man, I feel bad for all you old people!  (*grin*)  This last night, I needed to fall asleep a bit early so that I could wake up at 5am to drive my dad to the airport at 6am... Instead, I found myself still reading at 4am.  What was there to do but read another 2 hours and not sleep at all?  So yeah, I read all night.  It was awesome.  (I did, however, pass out from 7 to 2:30)

I go through small phases of reading a little and reading a lot.  For the most part, those phases correspond with school, but not always.  I like your idea, Dave, about reading some tried and true books.  I've reread Hitchhiker's Guide and a few Vonnegut books, which always gets me back in the reading mood.  I wish you luck!

[iamafish]

strongly considering doing that tonight. I have to leave at 4. We shall see how things pan out.

[NomadicScribe]

I'm not middle-aged, but I am someone with a lot of activities and ambition and an overall crowded schedule. For me, I refuse to feel guilty if I go through a dry spell and don't have that much time to read. Guilt, or "horror", at not reading much  sometimes is an absolute waste of effort.

I do make time to read, and when I have my own set of parameters for what makes my reading list. One, I tend not to reread. Two, I follow my curiosities, interests, and passions. I get addicted to a subject and want to know all about it. Because of this, about half my reading is not fiction at all. I like to read science, history, politics, whatever I can get my hands on. When I come up with a story idea, I really enjoy putting time and effort into research. It's the best part about writing.

Basically, interest fuels passion. Don't sit there and wait to be entertained by a boring book. Go out, and find a book that you think is going to be awesome!

[Planish]

I'm 58, but I'm not sure age is the sole cause. I waited for a long time to buy King's "Under The Dome" in paperback, and finally found a trade paperback copy last Fall. I got about halfway through it, and then just sort of drifted away from it. I had already been listening to a lot of Podiobooks, short fiction podcasts, and audio drama. I used to love reading a book from cover-to-cover, but it just fell lower on my list of things to do.

Around the same time, I discovered that it was getting to be more difficult to stay on task when writing lengthy documents at work. Computer programming? Forget it.

Then one day I heard a rerun of an interview with Nicholas Carr, on CBC Radio One's "The Current". They talked about an article that he had written – Is Google Making Us Stupid?: What the Internet is doing to our brains.
See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Is_Google_Making_Us_Stupid%3F
The upshot was (IIRC) that the internet is retraining us to think more like pre-industrial revolution hunter-gatherers. It really struck a chord in me.

Some excerpts from the wikipedia article:

In Carr's 2008 book The Big Switch: Rewiring the World, From Edison to Google, the material in the final chapter, "iGod", provided a basis for his later Atlantic magazine article titled "Is Google Making Us Stupid?".[23] The inspiration to write "Is Google Making Us Stupid?" came from the difficulties Carr found he had in remaining engaged with not only books he had to read but even books that he found very interesting.[3] This is sometimes called deep reading, a term coined by academic Sven Birkerts in his book The Gutenberg Elegies and later defined by developmental psychologist Maryanne Wolf with an added cognitive connotation.
............

At the start of the essay, Carr says that his recent difficulties with concentrating while reading books and long articles may be due to spending a lot of time on the Internet. He posits that regular Internet usage may have the effect of diminishing the capacity for concentration and contemplation. He prefaces his argument with a couple of anecdotes from bloggers on their changing reading habits, as well as the findings of a 2008 University College London study titled "Information Behaviour of the Researcher of the Future" which suggests the emergence of new types of reading.
...............................

The selection of one particular quote in Carr's essay from pathologist Bruce Friedman, a member of the faculty of the University of Michigan Medical School, who commented on a developing difficulty reading books and long essays and specifically the novel War and Peace, was criticized for having a bias toward narrative literature. The quote failed to represent other types of literature, such as technical and scientific literature, which had, in contrast, become much more accessible and widely read with the advent of the Internet. At the Britannica Blog, writer Clay Shirky pugnaciously observed that War and Peace was "too long, and not so interesting", further stating that "it would be hard to argue that the last ten years have seen a decrease in either the availability or comprehension of material on scientific or technical subjects".

The radio interview (about 24 minutes long) is also available as streaming audio at http://www.cbc.ca/thecurrent/2010/07/july-2-2010.html , in Part Two.

My son, on the other hand, just finished plowing through my considerable collection of Larry Niven novels and short stories. He says that he has a kind of inertia where he'll spend a long time at one activity. Then, if he does something else for a while, he finds it difficult to go back to the original activity.

I've been thinking about getting myself a Kobo eReader Touch recently. Maybe that'll help get back in the groove. Audio drama on an iPod is great and all, but with some stories I would like to be able to rescan the previous line immediately, instead of having to go through the hassle of re-winding back through just a few seconds of audio. If I wanted to read some classics, it would probably pay for itself very quickly (compared even to buying second-hand paperbacks) since they're all in the public domain and available for free from gutenberg.org in a bunch of different formats.

I miss the winter nights, sitting in a recliner chair with a nice warm reading lamp over my shoulder and a cuppa' hot chocolate on the end table.