Skip to main content

Booking through Thursday (a day late): Reading habits

Today's question on Booking Through Thursday is about changing reading habits:

Have your reading habits changed since you were a child? (I mean, I’m assuming you have less time to read now, but …) Did you devour and absorb books when you were 10 and only just lightly read them now? Did you re-read frequently as a child but now only read new books? How about types of books? Do you find yourself still attracted to the kinds of books you read when you were a kid?

My reading habits haven't really changed that much, except I am possibly more choosy about the books I read, and I read more. As a kid, I would devour any and all books that came my way, regardless of the quality. Quantity was the main thing. These days I think more about what I am reading and not just any book will do, but since I also read faster, I go through more books.

Back then, I would become so absolutely absorbed in what I was reading that I would forget about hunger, pain and discomfort and not be aware at all of what was going on around me. Proof in point: I got to spend a month with my grandmother one summer when I was around twelve, and she took me to a specialist to have my hearing tested because if I was reading, I didn't just not answer her when called, but actually didn't hear her. This is no longer the case, except when I am reading, the low but persistent traffic noise I live with 24/7 fades away into nothing and if the book is very absorbing, I may experience the weather, sounds, smells and colours inside the book rather than what is around be. However, it now takes a very special book to create this kind of experience for me, whereas before, I completely walked into any story I was reading.

I didn't learn to read my first year in elementary school - not because I couldn't grasp it, but because it was boring. My mother taught me to read in less than a month during the following summer by using a different method and by interesting me in books with real stories in them. As it happens, those were detective stories and adventure tales (mostly Enid Blyton and Dr. Dolittle) and folk tales, three genres that have followed me through life as firm favourites.To these I added travelogues when I was a teenager, and popular science books and romances as an adult, and my interest in folk tales and mythology evolved into an interest in fantasy.

These days, I reread less than I used to, but every now and then I pick up an old favourite and settle down to read it with a fond smile on my face. How about you?

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

How to make a simple origami bookmark

Here are some instructions on how to make a simple origami (paper folding) bookmark: Take a square of paper. It can be patterned origami paper, gift paper or even office paper, just as long as it’s easy to fold. The square should not be much bigger than 10 cm/4 inches across, unless you intend to use the mark for a big book. The images show what the paper should look like after you follow each step of the instructions. The two sides of the paper are shown in different colours to make things easier, and the edges and fold lines are shown as black lines. Fold the paper in half diagonally (corner to corner), and then unfold. Repeat with the other two corners. This is to find the middle and to make the rest of the folding easier. If the paper is thick or stiff it can help to reverse the folds. Fold three of the corners in so that they meet in the middle. You now have a piece of paper resembling an open envelope. For the next two steps, ignore the flap. Fold the square diagonally in two. Yo...

Book 40: The Martian by Andy Weir, audiobook read by Wil Wheaton

Note : This will be a general scattershot discussion about my thoughts on the book and the movie, and not a cohesive review. When movies are based on books I am interested in reading but haven't yet read, I generally wait to read the book until I have seen the movie, but when a movie is made based on a book I have already read, I try to abstain from rereading the book until I have seen the movie. The reason is simple: I am one of those people who can be reduced to near-incoherent rage when a movie severely alters the perfectly good story line of a beloved book, changes the ending beyond recognition or adds unnecessarily to the story ( The Hobbit , anyone?) without any apparent reason. I don't mind omissions of unnecessary parts so much (I did not, for example, become enraged to find Tom Bombadil missing from The Lord of the Rings ), because one expects that - movies based on books would be TV-series long if they tried to include everything, so the material must be pared down ...

Bibliophile discusses Van Dine’s rules for writing detective stories

Writers have been putting down advice for wannabe writers for centuries, about everything from how to captivate readers to how to build a story and write believable characters to getting published. The mystery genre has had its fair share, and one of the best known advisory essays is mystery writer’s S.S. Van Dine’s 1928 piece “Twenty rules for writing detective stories.” I mentioned in one of my reviews that I might write about these rules. Well, I finally gave myself the time to do it. First comes the rule (condensed), then what I think about it. Here are the Rules as Van Dine wrote them . (Incidentally, check out the rest of this excellent mystery reader’s resource: Gaslight ) The rules are meant to apply to whodunnit amateur detective fiction, but the main ones can be applied to police and P.I. fiction as well. I will discuss them mostly in this context, but will also mention genres where the rules don’t apply and authors who have successfully and unsuccessfully broken the rules. 1...