Bookworms: Do You Find Yourself Reading Differently These Days?

Tackling some causes for the change in reading habits — the results may surprise you

“I like the person I become when I read a lot of books. I dislike the person I become when I spend a lot of time on social media” ~ Johann Hari, author of Stolen Focus

Do you find yourself skimming the pages of a freshly purchased book?

You find the cover lovely, the blurb catches your attention, and then you read the first chapter.

You read the second chapter.

Then…you close the book. You find yourself on social media hunting for the next BookTok sensation, or a highly recommended read from Instagram. You are so in love with the reviews, that you literally buy that book too.

You read a few pages, skim it, and lay it down.

This cycle continues for a while.

What’s happening?

In Johann Hari’s book, Stolen Focus: Why you can’t pay attention — and how to think deeply again, he speaks with different scientists and psychologists about what is happening to the bookworms of the world. He was stunned that a seemingly well learned librarian admitted that even she has trouble reading and sticking with a book long enough to finish it.

According to Hari’s book, The American Time Survey discovered something quite interesting.

Between the years of 2004–2017, the proportion of men reading for pleasure, fell by 40%. Women’s reading for pleasure fell by 29%. The study is based on a sample of 26,000 Americans.

If my math is right, that means about 3,000+ people are reading for pleasure (a small number really), while the rest are not reading at all, or only if necessary for school, work, etc.

“The medium is the message”- Marshall McLuhan

There was a time, a wondrous time, when I would sit and read a book all day. Devour its words like it was law. Digest the stories as if they were the magic potion for longevity. The characters I became so close to, I can still remember their names and let their stories dance off my tongue when I recount it to others.

There was a time, where under the dim, orange light it would grow late, but the print book held in my hand was open, bare to me and I would laugh, cry, giggle constantly and once the book closed, it took a moment for me to get my bearings and realize, “Oh yeah. I am back on this Earth.”

That’s what I call reading.

Then, in the late 90s early 2000s — blogs were introduced. YouTube and other social media tools were eventually created, but these were mainly accessed from your PC. So, it didn’t take away the total pleasure and idea of what reading meant.

Until much later.

Screen reading, according to Hari and other psychologists, has taken over our pleasure of reading actual books. In fact, the term is “screen inferiority”. After some studies has taken place, researchers found that those who read actual books retain information better than those who read from the screen.

I am sure you have encountered this phenomenon on the job too.

Many jobs still hand out physical papers for training purposes, but have you realized that most jobs’ intranet hold the training materials there, or they offer you a link and you are to read it thirty minutes before you hop back to the office or jump on phone calls?

Then you are told, “The materials will be on this site when you need it”

Here’s the thing.

I learn better, reading from print. Certainly, I can still learn from the screen because the words are the same. However, if I have the paper in hand and am able to highlight passages — my brain processes it a bit better. There is a science behind this, but it would probably make this article into an hour long one instead of just a few minutes, so let’s move on further.

I enjoyed reading 20+ years ago. Not sure if I am enjoying it much now

Let me rephrase the above sentence —

I still love to read and am reading some amazing books by talented writers. However, when I compare how I am reading now to how I read back in the day, it is supremely different.

When I would go to the library and bring back a tote bag full of books, it made my heart pump harder. Sometimes the cover would be shiny(glossy), or a bit rough(matte), and other times I loved when the artwork were raised like small bumps I could press my fingertips into. It made reading more real.

Similar to how CDs back in the day did not just contain music, but leaflets of info about the artist and the producers behind the music. Today, you can head to their webpages or Google the artists’ lyrics or music team.

I have two reading moments that stick out in my mind:

The first was when Dean Koontz’s Seize the Night came out in 1998.

It was probably the Christmas season because I was snuggled under my covers and my small lamplight on as I traveled with Christopher Snow in Moonlight Bay, seizing the night in all its beauty and treachery while the Nutcracker played softly in the background.

In 2008, I purchased all of the Twilight Saga. Big, beautiful glossy hardcover books with enough pages to make me pant and sweat. I stayed up to past two in the morning reading all about Bella and her monstrous love triangle between a wolf and a vampire.

This is not to say I don’t have memorable moments from eBooks that I have read. I still recall the story about the Black woman needing help from a white supremacist hideout when she was being chased by some shapeshifting thing in the middle of the night. This was in Sycorax’s Daughters, an eBook anthology I proudly “own”.

You see?

I can’t even say I truly own a book if it is digital. I can’t even hold it! It can be deleted or changed at any time(this has happened). While reading, I have to make sure my phone or Kindle device is charged up. Thankfully, I can place the phone settings to Do Not Disturb on my iPhone so I can read an eBook in peace.

The most disturbance I have to deal with a print book, is if someone calls me(I can just ignore it) or there’s a knock on the door.

One major convenience of the eBook(and smut readers can thank me for mentioning this one), is that no one can see those nasty, sexy books we read. We don’t have to make cute covers for them, we can read it privately on our iphones.

Reading remains an enjoyable pastime in any form.

Over the years — work, social media and compulsive buying of any book promoted has reduced my reading time. Work cuts into 8 hours of my potential reading time so I have 2,000+ eBooks I have not even opened. Print books build up in small sections of my bedroom because I thought the title sounded cool and then those Book Toks have me buying new authors’ works I never before considered.

Thank goodness the 2,000+ books I own are digital. I can’t have those spilling all around my place!

Thank you for reading!

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