I’m beginning to hate reading.
By: Beth Van Der Pol
Tags: Productivity, Books, Happiness, Writing, Reading

Writer’s Blog

I’m beginning to hate reading.

Thanks, English literature degree.

I have never considered myself a picky reader. If a story is good I will enjoy it. I can glance over typos and grammatical errors. If I’m really absorbed in your story, I won’t even notice them.

I used to love reading. I would read anything and everything I could get my hands on. I could spend countless hours reading and relaxing until all of a sudden I couldn’t anymore.

I think that I’m blaming my degree.

I started a module on English literature this year, and while I’m enjoying it, I think it’s killing my love of reading. I’m picking up books that are by all means excellent books and… fighting my way through them.

I know that I’m reading good books.

I can’t help but feel that if I had picked these books up at any other time in my life, I would’ve thoroughly enjoyed them. Knowing that I’m going to have to overanalyse any given book, and write a paper on it has slowly sucked the joy out of every book I pick up.

I am quickly beginning to realise that I prefer reading when it’s not that deep.

I don’t really enjoy looking at books or poems in terms of cultural or political terms. I don’t even really like looking at them as more than surface-level pieces.

Don’t get me wrong. I do enjoy reading the backstory and finding out things about the lives of authors that I otherwise wouldn’t have bothered to discover.

I think, at this point, I just want the option to not know everything.

I also haven’t enjoyed being told what to read.

I didn’t know that I was a mood reader at the beginning of this course. I now know that I 100% am. I find it very difficult to force myself to sit down and read something that I don’t want to.

I prefer picking my books.

I love that I’m gaining a wealth of cultural knowledge that will hopefully come in useful during a pub quiz someday, but all I really want, this far through my course is to sit down and read something that I want to read.

I have deadlines now.

This means that I not only have to read a certain book and all of the information around it, but I have a very small amount of time to read the actual books.

I can’t take my time and enjoy the reading process.

What is stranger still is that I feel guilty about reading during my study hours. Reading is supposed to be fun, so it doesn’t fit in my study hours… but I don’t want to read the books, so it doesn’t fit into leisure time either.

This means that no matter when I choose to read, I will most likely feel wrong in one or another!

I can’t choose what I read.

This is the obvious one. I didn’t think I would mind it so much. I really didn’t think it would cause a big issue, but I have books that I’ve been excited about for so long that I can’t dive into yet.

I’ve had The Testaments since Christmas, and I still haven’t found the time to read it.

I feel like in gaining all of the knowledge that I have about the wonderful world of English literature that I’ve lost the actual purpose of reading: fun.

On the bright side, I have a wonderful way to spend my summer holiday this year.

I’ll be catching up on all of the great stories I’ve had to postpone and relearning how to love reading.