Hopefully most of you like to read as much as I do. I usually have a book by my chair in our
family room so that when my daughters are watching Spongebob or something else
I care little about, I can pick it up and read.
However, what to read is the issue.
I’ve begun to notice that I’m trying fewer and fewer new
books. Instead, I’m re-reading ones I’ve
enjoyed over the years, from Harry Potter to Tim Zahn’s Heir to the EmpireTrilogy to Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South. Yes, I’ve read each several times – a few of
them a dozen or more – but I’ve found them comforting, like a bowl of
mac-and-cheese or an old blanket.
But that’s also limiting.
There are good books out there, yet I’m not expanding out to read
them. Part of it is that I tend to like
that which I’ve already enjoyed. And
since I already know I enjoyed it, I know I’ll continue to enjoy it. I mean, it’s not like I go back and read
books I hated(Moby Dick hasn’t been in my hands since 11th
grade). Part of it, tying back into that
monstrosity of Moby Dick(or The Scarlet Letter, or The Great Gatsby, or any one
of a hundred other books I trudged my way through but thoroughly despised) is
fear of the unknown. Will I be wasting
my time? What if I start to read it and
it turns out to be garbage?
Yes, these are silly fears, but they’re real. I’m pretty conservative about what books I
pick up, and breaking my inertia to find something new takes real effort. I know I should just get over myself and pick
up something, but getting there isn’t as easy as it may sound. It’s hard for something to grab my attention
and keep it, which is the key part of a novel.
Shoot, there are even several books on my bookshelf(or packed away in
boxes…I’m still unpacking from my recent move to Tennessee) that I haven’t yet
gotten around to. They looked great on
the bookstore shelf, but I never got around to picking them up for a thorough
read.
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