Books, books and more books…I feel like there is a whole deluge of books in our lives these days. I am referring to the over-stuffed Little Free Libraries around me. And new books in bookstores all the time. A whole lot of creativity is brewing everywhere. And sharing is so easy. That is all very exciting for humanity.

But it also seems we are able to read less?

In just this year with less than 10 days I have heard two people mention that they feel like they are losing the ability to read a paper book. That they find it hard to pick up a book and just read. Mostly because it takes a whole lot of mental effort to focus on this slow form of entertainment. There are no flashy videos, no one speaking to us. But just some words on a page that we actually have to make the effort of reading to ourselves in our heads and make sense of them for hundred of pages…not very glamourous or exciting, right?

And a whole lot of effortful.

I know this feeling.

I was not able to read a book with concentration the first year of my motherhood journey. My life was so full, and time to chill came in very short and far-away bursts that immersing myself in a book seemed like too much work for too small a reward, and my brain just refused. I had no choice but to not read much at all that year.

But thankfully reading books has not been my challenge since. Being a part of a bookclub where we discuss a book a month with treats, with laughter, with life stories with people who’ve been having these meetings for years now, month after month, with books after books. The prospect of meeting friends to talk about books makes reading a tad bit easier. Not all books are great, and not all books get read cover to cover. But having that thread in my life makes me never really give up, and keep the connection to the little packages of paper filled with words alive.

When I started reading my classic of the year in December I found the going pretty hard too. Starting Vanity Fair was easy. It is not a difficult book to read at all, unlike my last year’s classic Crime and Punishment. Vanity Fair is humorous, satirical, and with caricatured characters. I was picturing myself sailing easily and quickly to the end of the book like it was no effort whatsoever. But, it was a book that got published chapter by chapter throughout the 1840s. A hundred and eighty years ago. Which means our way of writing books and reading books is very different that when the author wrote it for his audience. In other words, the going was super slow. Picking the book up was an effort, and a chapter at a time was all I could manage in a stretch. It was only when I was past the half-way mark in the book that putting it down became hard for me. I had gotten used to the pace, the language, the characters, and was immensely invested in their stories.

This was my last book of last year- my 85th. Even with all that reading behind me, it was hard. But because it was good writing, and the fact that its considered a classic, I knew I wasn’t wasting my time reading this book. So I stuck with it, and the reward of finishing a satisfying well written classic was immense. It wasn’t that I wasn’t enjoying the story from the get go. I just found it slow to move. And I was ok to read it slowly at that point.

So yes, reading is not always easy. But it is a habit that has a lot to give us, and to make lives richer. The slow and deep way to immerse in another world, and to learn about an idea or topic, is one way to travel inside another human’s brain and have a silent conversation with them. That connection, that slowing down, that gift of imagination…that is what reading a book is all about. And the effort we need to put in- a lot to start with- is paid off manifolds by the time we have become solid readers and cannot imagine a single day go by without a book to read.

Yes, reading a physical book is hard. But also yes, it is a great obsession to have…