Reading is a good thing. Until it's not. I have gone overboard with reading. Even a few weeks ago I was going to take a little break. I'd been reading multiple books each day for a few months. Some for deadlines. Some not. I was ready for a break.
Then I picked up two books.
One, I'd read a chapter of each day, the other, I'd read when I wasn't reading the one. Say, if I finished the chapter of the first one. They'd both been in my long ass reading list for ages. Like, actually years in both cases. I was excited to finally ready them. So, no break for me.
The other day I saw a friend post about finishing book number X of 50 to be read this year. Again, reading is great. Until it's not. I've never kept track of books read over a year. Mostly out of laziness. Maybe I have hit larger numbers some years. But how much have I really retained from that reading? There happens to be no way to know. My feeling is, not a lot.
Shooting for a number of books to read in a year and picking up several books right after putting one or several down is a great way to chase quantity.
I want to be about the quality.
I do this by not reading alone. I suggest you pick a friend when picking a book. Find a time to talk about it afterwards. Don't start the next book until you've digested the one in your mouth brain. When I picked up two new books after finishing the previous three it was like taking two bites with three still in my mouth. Or going for a grand meal right after finishing the previous one (truth be told, I do this a lot when traveling.)
What I'm saying is, we don't eat another meal until we've digested the previous one; take another bite until we've chewed the first. Why do we read the next book when we haven't digested the previous one? Like the slow food movement encourages, can't we slow read by finding time with someone else who's read the book to process it? Ask out loud, and hear your intuition's first thoughts in response, why the author wrote the book you just spent hours or days reading? Ask a friend or fellow reader, why the author made this choice or that one instead of that one or this one?
If we have time for the next book, we have time to stop reading alone.
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