Welcome back! Here are some of my tips for how to ease back into reading for fun again:
Do’s:
Reread stuff you loved when you were younger, whether that’s from childhood or high school English class. I first read To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee in junior high and it blew my mind when I reread it again in 2015. I’m probably due for another reading soon.
Read a book that was the source material for a movie or TV show that you love. A few books are almost exactly the same, line for line (e.g., Normal People by Sally Rooney), but the vast majority range from somewhat to largely different. For Timothee Chalamet fans (you know who you are), I recommend Call Me by Your Name by Andre Aciman and Little Women by Louisa May Alcott.
Read a graphic novel or comic book. You’ll fly through it in 1-2 hours and feel accomplished. I recommend all of Lucy Knisley’s graphic memoirs and the delightful college-set British comic series Giant Days by John Allison.
Read YA. It’s easy, fast, and fun. My favorite YA rom-com is probably When Dimple Met Rishi by Sandhya Menon, about two South Asian nerds falling in love and yes, it is as cute and fluffy as it sounds.
Once you’ve read a good book, read…
The sequel or rest of the series: No, the sequel is probably not as good as the first book but hey, it’s the same universe.
Everything else that that author has written: This is a “duh” statement. I, for example, have read everything else that Sandhya Menon has written.
Don’ts:
Don’t pressure yourself to conquer War and Peace or whatever you think adults “should” be reading. Skip the “100 Books You Need to Read Before You Die” lists.
However, do take up your friends’ recommendations. As I type this I realize this sounds like a thinly veiled statement to read what I’ve just listed, but in fact I write this because I finally took up Irene on her recommendation of The Idiot by Elif Batuman and of course, it was great.
Don’t force yourself to keep reading something you’re not loving. Move on. Yes, we all want to seem like the kind of person who reads Zadie Smith because she is so cool and smart. But ultimately no one’s going to know or care that you barely got 10% of the way into On Beauty and dropped it. (This is me exactly, but if this is also you, I recommend her novel Swing Time which is way easier to get into and her short story “Joy,” one of my favorite pieces of writing which I try to push on all of my friends at least once a year.)
Once you’ve picked out your book and have it in hand, tell yourself “I will not check Twitter/Instagram/whatever until I have read 10 pages of this book.” Ideally, you will have stored your phone in a different room altogether but if you read ebooks on your phone like I do, you’ll have to be disciplined. Most likely, after 10 pages you will be sucked into the book and you will not remember that you have a body, much less a social networking account.
Go forth and enjoy your read!
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