2020 was a bad year for almost everything, but it was a great year for reading. Pandemics, it turns out, are very conducive to the reading life. Last year I wrote this post about how I resurrected my almost non-existent reading life. Since then I have made a conscious effort to prioritize reading, mostly because it feels like time well spent, and I am certain it makes me a better person. I find that the more I practice this skill (I do believe reading is a skill that requires practice, just like playing an instrument, or learning a foreign language) the easier and more enjoyable it becomes. As a result, 2020 was my best reading year yet!
Read moreHow a Non-Reader Started Reading
Confession: I can probably count on one hand the number of books that I read between my college graduation and the birth of my first child. And if I was reading very little before becoming a mother, I basically stopped reading altogether after I started having kids. But I wasn’t always a non-reader. My childhood and teen years were marked first by Laura Ingalls Wilder and Anne of Green Gables, and then by The Lord of the Rings, Jane Austen, and Charles Dickens. I remember showing up to my high school job a few minutes late and with a tear-stained face because I just had to finish Great Expectations before my shift started.
The beginning of my non-reading started in college, oddly enough. As a music major a lot of my free time was spent in the practice rooms. I read what I had to for my classes, and that was about it. One of the greatest lessons I learned as a music major was that to get good at something you have to practice, everyday. When I stopped the practice of reading, I got really bad at it.
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