How to Start Reading Again
Featured Book: HELP ME by Marianne Power
Growing up, I read ceaselessly. I read while walking the four-and-a-half blocks from the swimming pool to my high school. I read while torturing myself on the Stairmaster, my book propped up on the display so I couldn’t see how many calories I’d burned but could still pump my arms with hand weights. I read in bed. I read at meals. I never wasn’t voraciously plowing through a book. Then I signed up for an English degree.
So many of my friends reminisce of their youth when they used to devour book after book. “What happened?” they wonder. Do we all have ADHD from Instagram reels? Is it our tired thyroids? Vitamin D deficiencies?
In my adult life, I’ve had long stretches of stark reading hiatuses. Years when I was busy wiping asses and mopping floors. Years when all my extraneous energy went toward bending myself in half in the name of an Olympic Yoga Routine. Years when I was too tired trying to earn money to pay for Ryvita crackers and tahini butter.
Maybe you’re in the midst of one of those years. A crappy boyfriend (or Gay Husband) can do it. So can swarms of children or excessive adult responsibilities. Perhaps your university career has eradicated the joy of reading for pleasure. Or the strain of your day job leaves you unable to fathom any extra-curricular besides binge-watching true crime and cult documentaries. Or 90-day fiancé.
If this is you, do not berate yourself. Adult life is exhausting with all kinds of unexpected elements like index funds and dusting shelves and researching air purifiers. Do not feel guilty if you are too tired to read. Or too burnt out. Or too addicted to the interwebs.
Even if you haven’t read a book in years, it is possible to become a reader again. But there’s no big rush and you don’t need to take a webinar.
73% to 93% Happier
One night over dumplings, I was discussing mediocre romantic relationship dynamics with my pal Wallis.
“Nobody’s selling it for me,” I said. “Seems like a real drag.”
“Yah, a good relationship makes life easier, not harder,” said Wallis. “Shit doesn’t bother you as much. Facing the world is suddenly possible. And better.”
“I feel the same way about library books,” I said. “A good book makes you 73% to 93% happier.”
The other Wednesday, I announced this to Karen, my twelfth therapist.
“That’s nice. But you can’t take a library book to dinner,” said Karen. I told Karen I disagreed.
How to Start Reading Again
Winston Churchill Public School Library. Little Erica reads whatever she wants. In this case, it looks like Clifford the Big Red Dog’s Halloween
One: You Can Read Whatever You Want
When I was applying to university, there was big talk of the Foundation Year Program at the University of King’s College in Halifax. From Homer and the Bible to T.S. Eliot and Virginia Woolf, the program was meant to give students a well-rounded perspective on the fundamental texts that so-called shaped our contemporary world. I applied and got started on the reading list, almost all of it old white dudes.
I remember sneaking extra calisthenics in my bedroom as I trudged through all 719 pages of Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. Friends, this is no way to live.
In my reading recovery, I have granted myself permission to read whatever I want. No need to appear clever. No need to read what everybody else is reading. No need to try and improve yourself or expand your mind. Reading is not a performance.
My criteria for a book is, it has to be addictive. I want to feel like devouring it, like I want to bring it with me everywhere I go.
If you’re trying to start reading again, you might need to let go of your lofty literary ideals. During periods when I am starting to read again, no books are off limits. Often in the library, I will skim a first chapter to discover a rather obvious (ideally bloody) cliff hanger or explosion. A fire, a murder, some kind of great big mess. The writing is nothing special. Perhaps someone’s heart leaped out of their chest or their cheeks flushed fire-engine red. The plot device is clearly manipulative, even what you might call trashy. “I really shouldn’t be reading this,” I think to myself. Thirty-six hours later, I have managed to do little else but zoom through the book. It’s like reading Netflix.
Let yourself read Netflix.
I love Margaret Atwood, but I also have a soft spot in my heart for “the worst book I couldn’t put down.” If you’re ready for some Netflix-style reading, might I recommend The Couple Next Door by Shari Lapena. In it, a model couple makes one-to-seven mistakes, leading to a harrowing crime whose repercussions twist and turn all the way to the gripping ending. This page-turner of a suspense novel made its rounds through my entire family.
It all started at a dinner party. The Couple Next Door. Do your best to buy it from your favourite indie bookstore!
“Can you believe those people?” said my grandmother.
“Unreal,” said my grandfather.
While it’s no Pulitzer, the Couple Next Door will have you pulled from the first page. You’ll be back to feeling like a teenager, blasting through books into the night. It will renew your confidence that you are a reader. You can give Simone de Beauvoir a try another time.
Two: Reread Beloved Books From Childhood or Otherwise
When I was nine, I was gifted a box set of Judy Blume’s coming of age novels from Just as Long as We’re Together to Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. For months, I reread them in a circuit, immersing myself in the lumpy sweaters and Kotex belts that awaited me when I hit puberty. It wasn’t until my ninth time through Then Again, Maybe I Won’t that I realized what the narrator Tony meant when he said “he got hard” and had to conceal the evidence with piles of text books and a sweaty raincoat.
My literature professor Brian P. Trehearne used to say that if you only read a poem once then you may as well not have read it at all. If this is true for William Wordsmith, then why not Judy Blume novels? Why not any books?
While I am not a big rereader, I believe that returning to the books you once loved is a great way to get back into the habit of reading. It’s amazing how rapidly even the most crucial plot details can evaporate. But some of it does come right back. Your brain doesn’t have to do all the work of entering into a brand-new world and so you won’t have to concentrate so hard. Plus, there will be magic and brilliance that you didn’t notice the first time around.
Rereading books is like visiting old friends—both the people in the books and the person you were when you first met them. Some readers claim that they don’t have time to reread books. “There are only so many books you can read in your life. Why waste time rereading?” The life coaches would call this a scarcity mindset. An old book with fresh eyes offers an enriching, nostalgic experience. It is the heart of luxury. Let yourself be luxurious. You might start with Charlotte’s Web.
Three: Get a Magazine Subscription
If Infinite Jest feels infinite and Tolstoy is not your thing, why not go with something a little shorter? For example—a magazine. Following my most recent reading drought, I signed up for a $12 three-month New Yorker subscription. At first, I read the whole thing from cover to cover in the bathtub. It made me feel very worldly and sophisticated. And I got to smugly carry around the free tote bag. I continued the subscription beyond the three months, and by the end of the year, I was devouring novels again.
Please don’t feel like you need to read your magazines cover to cover. One of the great things about being a grown-up is you can skim the heading of an article about an obscure genetic anomaly in Russian moss and say, You know what—ain’t nobody got time for that!
Four: Comics and Graphic Novels
The best graphic novels are some of the most generous works of art out there and they absolutely count as real books. What is more delightful than a picture book for adults? But graphic novels are hardly frivolous. Done well, they offer a deeply humanizing experience, even and especially when exploring difficult themes like heartbreak, mental health issues, fertility struggles, and all the hardest things about being a person.
My favourite graphic novels are:
The Hipless Boy by Sully (aka my dear friend, Sherwin Tija)
The Infinite Wait by Julia Wertz
Catalogue Baby by Myriam Steinberg
They are all funny, sad, and hopeful, and they stuck with me years after I read them. If your concentration is not excellent, get your hands on a graphic novel.
The Hipless Boy, by Sully/Sherwin Tjia. You can buy it here. And be sure to follow Sherwin on Facebook and/or check out his quirky events!
Five: Reading Buddies? Book Clubs?
If you are trying to start a workout routine, they say you should get a workout buddy. Maybe I tried that once in my life. Some people are too neurotic for workout buddies. But having someone you can sit next to as you read on a couch or a park bench is dreamy. The star of my life’s first great love story used to say that I made reading an interactive activity. That’s always a risk with reading buddies.
With a quality reading buddy, you get all the joys of being alone together. Montréal’s beloved De Still Books on Duluth even has a special group reading evening on Wednesdays called Page Break. They give you wine or sparkling water, turn on a little music, and it’s like sustained silent reading from grade 4. Sitting next to a stranger as they focus intently on Meg Mason’s Sorrow and Bliss is a wonderful way to fall in love, even if it wears off as soon as the talking starts.
I’ve never been in a book club, but it sounds very festive. I hope to join one before I retire and I hope there will be muffins. Even if you don’t have a book club or an official reading buddy, it is helpful to have a friend or relative you can talk to about books with. You can laugh, cry, compare notes, and lead each other from one book to another.
Six: Library Time
In my first self-help book, I invented the six kinds of time. One of the best kinds of time is Library Time. “Library Time is publicly funded and relaxing and full of possibility.” Library Time is one of my main extracurricular activities as a 37-year-old adult.
There are memes about how Marie Kondo is crazy and unreasonable for suggesting that each person should only own a maximum of 33 books. I just counted all my books and I have 36. I dust each one on Friday afternoons. As an anti-hoarder, I support authors and indie bookstores by gifting books for other people and not for me.
My relationship to possessions is vaguely pathological. Go ahead and buy all the books! But if you’re short on cash or space, Library Time is a beautiful thing.
In Quebec libraries, there is sometimes a shortage of the best English books. So, you’ll have to request them and get on the waiting list. Then you get to luxuriate in the magic of delayed gratification. When you finally get the book you’ve been waiting for, it is such a thrilling treat.
The over-dusted bookshelf
Seven: Free Book Boxes
Free book boxes offer another low-committal way to access books. In Montréal, it seems like there are free book boxes on every block. As many of 21 out of my 36 books come from the free book boxes where you can take a book or leave a book. Taking a book is low-pressure. Leaving a book is cleansing.
I used to be terrified of bed bugs and so I would put my free books in the freezer for a few days before digging in. Then my house burned down and suddenly bed bugs became less harrowing. Now I only put my free books in the freezer if I remember. This is me, living on the edge.
I HEART LECTURE, Free Book Box, Montréal, De Bréboeuf and Gilford.
Eight: Meet Your Favourite Authors on Interviews and Podcasts
There is something so magical about real, live authors. So, after I read a book, I love to look up the author on my podcast app and download everything I can find on them. This prolongs the fun of the book, and it helps you remember more details for longer.
What’s also soothing is you often hear that for most authors, even the most successful ones, writing books is not a wildly breezy process.
In interviews about her book, The School of Good Mothers, author Jessamine Chan says, “Well, the idea came to me fully formed in 2014.” Despite this, there were stops and starts. Rewrites and pauses when she thought she’d never finish. I adored The School of Good Mothers and I adore Jessamine Chan for not saying it felt like she was channeling God the whole time. Reliably, even for the pros, writing takes years.
Nine: Books Are Like Clothing
Everybody has those jeans or that dress or that blazer that you only keep because you swear that one day when you feel younger, sexier, thinner, more profesh, then finally, you will wear it. You won’t wear it. Don’t keep it. Letting go of uncharitable clothing is always a liberation. It’s the same thing with books. Is your bedside table clogged with “all the books you have to read”? You don’t have to read any books. If a book has been sitting on your shelf collecting dust for years, then maybe it’s not for you. Set yourself free. Remember, you can read whatever you want.
Ten: If you get to be a reader, you are most fortunate
In my high school Canadian Literature class, my legendary teacher Mrs. Carolee Mason had us all choose an author to read and correspond with. I picked Carol Shields and wrote to her as earnestly as I raced through her myriad novels. Hotmail only saved Carol’s half of our correspondence, but I remember telling her how when I was a little girl, I would spend my summers riding my red bicycle to the library, picking out a book, reading it, and then returning to the library the very next day for a new book. Carol had just published her final novel, Unless, which she wrote while undergoing treatment for breast cancer.
Despite her illness, Carol wrote back:
Dear Erica,
I am going through a period of poor health, but I do want to respond to your wonderful letter. I absolutely believe everything you say about how the reading of novels can help us recognize how alike we all are. When we hear a writer express something we have experienced but not articulated--the shock of pleasure (and relief) is enormous. I also want to tell you that I, too, spent my summers on my bike going back and forth to the library, a book a day. I am so thankful that my parents didn't chase me outside to play in the fresh air. With every good wish, carol
The shock of pleasure at having this real live (and famous) author write me back was enormous. The author’s generosity was enormous. Though Carol was quite sick, somehow she still took the time to read and reply to a naïve and gushing sixteen-year-old she’d never met. I continued to write to her emails all semester. A few sample subject lines—Words of thanks, Wishing you sunshine your way=), Wishing you more moments of happiness and clarity=).
Mrs. Mason had us read so many books that year. Fifth Business by Robinson Davies, The Piano Man’s Daughter by Timothy Findley, Surfacing by Margaret Atwood. So much Alice Munroe. Our final projects were a mixture of meandering essays and Bristol board. It’s a bit of a blur now, but I vaguely remember our class put together a bunch of our favourite quotes. I gathered these and sent a selection to Carol, along with a collage and samples of my newspaper columns, The Big Blue, which I wrote for my small town’s newspaper the Perth Courier.
When Carol was well enough, she wrote:
Hello dear Erica,
This is just to let you know that you are the most fortunate of young women: to have the kind of teacher you do, the kind of exposure to literature. This really is where the excitement lies, though we are very reluctant these days to talk about the life of the mind. I wish for you to keep this gift, and promise you, as nearly as I can promise anyone, that it will never desert you. carol shields
Carol died in July of 2003. I will always treasure her correspondence, and this reminder of where the excitement really lies. It’s easy to mourn your lost youth and potential, or the grief that life didn’t turn into the party of gold stars you’d hoped for. But Carol Shields was right. If you get to be a reader, then you are most fortunate. The world of a book holds the world’s greatest gift, a deep inner space to return to again and again. May you uncover this gift and may it never desert you.
Please support all the most wonderful indie bookstores. If you’re in Montréal, you will have a dreamy time at De Stiil, Drawn & Quarterly, Drawn & Quarterly for Kids, and Librairie Paragraphe. And for Perth Ontario peeps, a fond plug for Spark Books and The Book Nook.
p.s.: If you finished this essay, you are doing a marvellous job at reading!
p.p.s.: Dorothy Cameron was another legendary English teacher.
p.p.p.s.: Audiobooks are fine.
