Since becoming a commuter, I have discovered something about my reading habits that I didn’t know beforehand. Previously, I read a lot of young adult fiction (and even books for younger readers). I thought I did this because I enjoyed this type of book the best, but I have discovered that I was wrong in my thinking.
Now that I have a two hour time slot set aside for reading each afternoon (five days a week), I no longer find myself gravitating towards books for younger people. I’m picking up, and enjoying, books for adults. I realise that I read the other books for two reasons: 1) I do enjoy them, and 2) it was more likely I’d finish the thinner book for young people than the thick book for adults because I didn’t have time to do a lot of reading.
Time was the issue, not my preference of book.
I also believed that I had an issue with concentration, but the last month or so has proven that totally wrong. When choosing a book to read, I find myself looking at my bookshelf with new interest. There is plenty of time to read now and I want to make the most of that time. I want to read all the books I’ve collected over the years. Those books teased me into buying them for whatever reason and now I have the time to consume and enjoy them. It’s brilliant! Whereas if I had tried to read those thick books when I first bought them I would have rushed them and found fault with all of them because of the time restraints. I am a slow reader and I would have been frustrated.
600 pages would have taken me three or four months to read. No wonder I didn’t enjoy them. Now they take me just over a week. That’s a huge difference. I’m enjoying new stories all the time, new characters, settings, plots, genres. At the risk of repeating myself, it’s brilliant!
That’s great news, Karen.
I’m finding the contemporary new releases easier to read then some of the classics I want to read. They’re less dense.