Booking Through Thursday
It happens even to the best readers from time to time… you close the cover on the book you’re reading and discover, to your horror, that there’s nothing else to read. Either there’s nothing in the house, or nothing you’re in the mood for. Just, nothing that “clicks.” What do you do?? How do you get the reading wheels turning again?
Well, I never physically run out of books to read, but I am sometimes simply not in the mood to read them. (I think this week would count as one of those times: I've read one Flannery O'Connor story and that's all.) So I'll check bloglines yet again, or watch The Daily Show, or go for a walk, or clean a birdcage or the refrigerator. Usually doing a bit of housework will jump start my interest in reading again, because I don't like cleaning house.
Sometimes the best approach is to randomly pull books from the shelves and read bits and pieces of them until something clicks. Or to reread sections from my favorites.
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Sometimes we need a break even from the best things. But I am always drawn back fairly soon.
ReplyDeleteIt's usually a very short break for me
ReplyDeleteWork, as much as I do love it... work is what takes me from my reading -- work and the weariness that accompanies the struggle to meet deadlines.
ReplyDeleteAs you might figure, then, since I am on a monthly deadline, I read a great deal in the the days right after a deadline, my usual amount (which is still significant) in the first two and half weeks of the month), and steadily decreasing amounts until the deadline.
Every once in a while, finishing a wonderful book will keep me from picking up the next. It's as if I can't imagine that any book that follows will be as satisfying.
Silly reader, I counsel myself. There's *always* another wonderful book.
Your response to this one sounds much like mine. :-) I too use the down time in-between books when I'm having trouble deciding what to read next or still recovering from my last book to get some of those other life stuff taken care of.
ReplyDeleteOh, I know that feeling. It is so awful for a bookworm, too. But you need a break, plain and simple. Don't worry, the urge will come back.
ReplyDeleteShort stories are good cures for that, or another genre you usually don't read. Or go back to an old favorite. For me, that's something like Little Women or A Tree Grows in Brooklyn.
Which Flannery story? Do tell!
It was "A Good Man is Hard to Find" and I read it aloud to my son--O'Connor mentions in The Habit of Being that she thinks her stories "gain in the reading" when they're read aloud.
ReplyDeleteWe certainly had a good time with it.
I often switch to comic books when I finish a book and don't know what's next. They're like the short stories that someone else recommended--little bits of story with a lot of variety.
ReplyDelete