Read on!

There is a horrible sense of deflation that comes with trying to read and not being able to connect with the material. T.V. shows, movies, songs and podcasts are replaceable and changeable; there are so many of them out there. Obviously, the same can be said of books but the dawn, advent and rise of social media has interfered with our (my) ability to read.

I wasn’t your typical, bookish child. I loved sports, watching cartoons and going wild with my brothers and friends, but in school and at my house I would be engrossed in a book any chance I got. I devoured numerous series; Brian Jacque’s Redwall series was an early favourite of mine; Harry Potter was and still is a favourite of mine; and A Series of Unfortunate Events by lemony Snicket amazed me with its melancholy.
My love for reading began to dwindle as I grew up, but throughout secondary school I still read frequently. College and the drinking culture I suddenly found myself in put the first few nails in the coffin. Moving to New York and continuing my downward spiral into drink started lowering the coffin into the ground. I began to get back into reading through Kindle and Amazon Prime just before I moved home.

It really pained me to look at the books I had bought and been left unopened. It still pains me to see the ones that I have began and given up halfway through, not because they I didn’t enjoy them. It is easier to scroll through the various social media feeds and fill your mind with negative news and meaningless memes. It is easier to play Fifa until you’re three months deep in the season and the board are telling you to improve your results. It’s easier to flick through the tv and watch the same episode of Friends that was on last night and the night before.
Except…. it’s not. It takes effort to continue to slip away from something that gave you so much joy and continues to supply that same joy in the brief times you go back to it. It takes effort to sit in your armchair and know full well that if you read you’d be happy. It takes effort to push away your desire to read. Yes, it takes effort to get back into reading and I almost trained myself. I’m still struggling but I’m slowly getting back to enjoying books and realising that the satisfaction you get upon completion of a novel, short story or poem is infinitely better than the instant gratification from opening Twitter and having information fed directly into your eyeballs. Finishing a mystery novel or crime thriller and seeing someone you didn’t even suspect be unmasked as the mastermind is akin to glorious ascension to Heaven above.

If reading is good for the mind, the heart and the soul then it would be foolish of me to not get back into it. Let’s read on! Maybe I’ll even write some more as a result 😀

What are some of your favourite books? Do you guys have any recommendations for me?:D