Reading Has Ruined My Life...?

This week, I want to do something a little different. Typically, I’ll talk about a book or short story or create a listicle, but I want to talk about something else this week. Being an English major has, for lack of a better term, ruined my love of reading.

Yes, a book blogger just said that.

I used to read every single day, I would never have a stack of book waiting to be read on my floor like I do right now. I would anxiously wait to get home each day to continue reading the book I had sitting on my bedside table. If I was very invested in the book I was reading at the time, so basically every book I read, I would stay up all night until every single word was consumed regardless of the length of the text.

Hi, yes, I was definitely a Matilda.

Now, I love books, I don’t dislike books anymore, but ever since I graduated college in May 2019 I haven’t been able to recapture that love of reading I once had. If given the chance I know I wouldn’t change my major to anything else; like I said, I love books. But being an English major means reading multiple books, stories, essays, and articles each week; making it very difficult to find the time to read anything outside of the required reading. I just didn’t read much for pleasure during my four years of college.

Upon graduating, I expected to go back to reading what I wanted, and at the speed that I used to, like I once had. That didn’t happen. I told myself that I was going to take a small break from reading after reading and analyzing books nonstop for the past four years. I basically said, “I graduated, I’m going to celebrate, and hang out with friends, and catch up on sleep that I lost thanks to stressing like crazy because of college.”

The college experience:

Flash forward to nearly a year after graduating, I have this amazing book blog… and a lack of interest in reading. I really want this blog to succeed and grow, but that can’t happen if my love of reading isn’t there.

I love books, I’ll never stop loving books, but I just don’t have much interest in reading at the moment. And I feel that you can see that in my writing. The posts in which I’m just having fun and writing about books I grew up reading or am making fun of ever so slightly of a book are much better posts than my actual reviews. And even then, the reviews I do on short stories seem, in my eyes at least, to be better reviews than then ones I do on novels.

This blog is going to continue. There will be a new post next week. I am not going to give up on this blog! But I am still trying to recapture my love of reading. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to read at the speed I once did, but I am slowly making my way there.

At this time, my attention span for reading mainly encompasses short stories. And there are many great short horror stories we can talk about. So as I slowly regain my love of reading, there are going to be a lot of short stories I review and talk about on the blog. And like I said, this blog shall continue with new posts each week. Next week, there will be a new review on the blog. Spoiler, there shall be a review of a short story from 19th century writer Ambrose Bierce.