📷: Savoy Bookshop & Cafe – Westerly, R.I.
As a kid, I remember reading countless of fantasy novels such as Percy Jackson and the Olympians, The 39 Clues and my personal favorite: the Gregor the Overlander series. These books would take me into another world, and I imagined myself in each scene with great detail. But at some point, in my life, reading just stopped. Reading began to feel more like a hassle/chore rather than for pleasure. Maybe it was when smartphones were coming up, or maybe when my dad got me my first Xbox 360. But it was as if a switch had turned off in my brain and my first instinct changed from flipping through to the next chapter to picking up a controller.
It turns out, I wasn’t the only one experiencing this drastic change, the entire world was. Michael Harris, an author (i.e. a person who writes books for a living) addressed in an opinion piece that he had “forgotten how to read”. He hypothesized that the way in which we read has forever changed. Online reading encourages us to process information in a more goal-oriented and disjointed way compared to old-fashioned literature that is generally more linear. Last year, I found myself reflecting on the types of books I read in the past compared to now, which was maybe one or two articles a week. When did it all change to short, segmented articles? When did I start to have trouble staying awake for even ONE chapter? I felt disheartened that I had lost my ability to read consistently and decided to challenge myself and open a book up once more.
“The average American spent seventeen minutes a day reading books and 5.4 hours on their phone” based on a study performed by Gallup.
– Johann Hari’s Stolen Focus
At a local book fair, I picked up a couple of books that looked interesting for a really good deal. The first being Shaq Uncut: Tall Tales and Untold Stories, an autobiography about Shaquille O’Neal, one of the most dominant basketball players in NBA history. The first time reading again was a real struggle. My attention span was so bad that after finished one chapter, I would reward myself with 20 minutes of doom scrolling to escape boredom. Which I found out later on through Dr. Katy Tam and CNN Health, that contrary to the belief, scrolling on social media to avoid boredom actually increases boredom. Needless to say, my new “method” of reading was not working very well and after a few months, I was finally able to complete my first book in what felt like decades. It honestly felt exhilarating to have finished a book from start to end, but I knew in order to keep this momentum going, I would have to find a new method of absorbing literature.
My girlfriend Shayla reads a lot. She probably reads 10 times the number of books that I do. Shayla was the first person to suggest an audiobook to me. At first, I was hesitant and I couldn’t see audiobooks as “real” reading since it seemed practically like cheating because the words are being read out to you. But because of my desperate need to read books again, I decided to give it a try. I started listening to them during my drives to work. It would be short 20-minute snippets at a time but the thing I noticed most was that those 20 minutes were uninterrupted. It was just me, the road, and the audiobook. Giving me time and space to really reflect and interpret what the author was trying to portray in the book. Now I feel like I an audiobook advocate, constantly listening to audiobooks during my runs or drives instead of music. If you are interested in listening to audiobooks, stop by your local library and pick up a library card. It’s free. From there, you can connect to a huge database of books and audiobooks through the Libby app and loan out an audiobook or two and give it a try. If you are a visual learner, I would recommend also renting out the book and playing both at the same time to have a kind of “storybook” effect. That’s something I learned recently that I found helpful as well. Happy Reading!
This year, with the help of audiobooks, I’ve already exceeded the number of books read in 2023 of 5 and almost doubled it to 9.
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