How I recovered my reading mojo
I know, I know. This newsletter is supposed to be about food and drink but the beauty of Substack is that you can write about anything you like and I thought some of you might have been lapsed readers too at some stage. And I’m very happy about how I overcame it so here goes …
The one thing you’d think would have been the unmitigated benefit of lockdown would have been the time to read books and as an avid reader I was looking forward to it. But somehow it didn’t happen. In fact, if anything I read less than I had beforehand. I started books and didn’t finish them. Then I didn’t even get round to starting them.
It wasn’t that I was depressed. I was getting on with my work. I hung out with my friends, once we were allowed to meet up again. I cooked (a lot) but I struggled to get through a book, particularly late at night, the time when most bookworms do their reading. 3 pages in and I was asleep.
I wasn’t happy about it so I canvassed the views of friends who read copiously for solutions
One told me she regularly put aside an hour in the afternoon to read which seemed a civilised idea, particularly with a cup of tea but I am usually scrambling to meet a deadline at that time of day.
Others said they listened to audio books but if I’m listening to the spoken word I generally prefer to listen to the radio or a podcast
Finally another friend, Signe, told me she read first thing in the day. My first reaction was that that was the worst time to read. As a morning person that’s when I tend to be most focussed and do my best work. It seemed mad to cut into that. But it worked.
I didn’t set myself too ambitious a task - a short chapter, even a few pages. One of the books I did get round to reading last year, James Clear’s Atomic Habits said the secret of acquiring a positive habit was making it easy. And what I found after that morning slot was that I was looking forward to a few moments later in the day when I could go back to my book.
It also makes sense not to set yourself too daunting a task. If the first book I’d embarked on after this resolution had been an 800 page blockbuster I suspect I’d still be reading it now - or more likely have given up on it.
My first books under this new regime were an easy read: Ha Joon Chang’s surprisingly entertaining Edible Economics (although I admit it doesn’t sound like it. It’s basically economics explained through ingredients) and Claire Keegan’s beautifully crafted Small Things Like These about life in a small Irish town. Anyone, I told myself sternly, can get through a novella.
I’ve always resisted the idea of a bookclub not wanting to be under pressure to finish a book by a certain date (I have enough deadlines in my life) or read one that wasn’t really my choice but my brilliant local bookshop, Heron Books, has started one you can dip into intermittently and its owner Lizzie is so breathtakingly enthusiastic about whatever title she’s talking about you can’t not want to read it. I joined them the other month for Julian Barnes The Noise of Time, a (short), clever book about Shostakovich I would never have read otherwise.
I’m also being more pro-active about following up on recommendations from friends. If I borrow a book, I try to read it straight away rather than add it to my still massive unread books pile, a phenomenon for which the Japanese have a wonderful word tsundoku.
Of course you won’t enjoy everything you embark on and there’s nothing wrong in abandoning a book with which you’re not getting on. I still haven’t managed to get my head round Lessons in Chemistry which everyone else I know seems to have enjoyed or Sally Rooney (ditto). But, contrary to expectations, I loved Mick Herron’s sleazy spy novel Slow Horses.
Good writing - and I realise this is stating the blindingly obvious - really hooks you in. The book I’ve enjoyed most this year was Andrew O’Hagan’s Mayflies, a really insightful, moving story about male friendship and his earlier book Be Near Me, about a troubled Catholic priest, challenging though it was. He has such an amazing ear for dialogue.
And I adored Shirley Hazzard’s The Transit of Venus, a story about the lives and loves of two sisters in post war England - or rather about one in particular, the fascinating, troubled, spellbinding Caro. The writing is exquisite.
Sometimes it’s good to tick off a classic, especially if it ties in with where you happen to be at the time. Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s magical, mystical 100 years of Solitude was exactly the right book to read on my trip to Brazil earlier this year.
A bit of humour helps too when you’re suffering a reading slump. Try Charlotte Mendleson’s The Exhibitionist about a hilariously dysfunctional family or India Knight’s Darling, which I’ve just finished, a piece of pure escapism based on Nancy Mitford’s the Pursuit of Love. Sheer comfort reading.
I’m still not getting through books with the frequency of some of my friends, some of whom I think find it hard to understand how I could have got myself into such a place. Two to three a month rather than two to three a week but my pleasure in reading has returned. And now I know that 10 minutes a day is all it takes to rekindle it.
Have you ever got stuck in a non-reading rut and if so what helped you get through?
Yes on the same basis as novellas. Bit of poetry doesn’t go amiss either …
I can't remember if you were pre- or post- recovered mojo when last we met! I marked down a couple of your recommendations then though. I hate slumps, as I know reading brings so much pleasure and structure to my day. I do almost all of my reading first thing, before anyone else is awake, when the minutes and hours really feel like mine and mine alone, and not time stolen from anyone else. On a good day I'll get an hour; on a weekend, I sometimes manage three before a first daughter appears downstairs!
I loved 'The Noise of Time', and '100 Years' however many years ago it was that I read that one! And I finished Keegan's book on a single weekend morning just a couple of weeks ago: such beautiful economy in the way she writes.
As for the towering to-be-read pile, remember Eco's words: 'read books are far less valuable than unread ones'! x