Used to be an avid reader? How to get back into books
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How can I overcome distractions to get back into reading?
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You're listening to Life Kit, from NPR. Hey, it's Marielle. I have this daydream where I go to the park and read under a tree. The sun is shining. The temperature is not too hot, but not chilly either. The ground beneath me is comfortable. I have snacks on hand. I'm hydrated. And I am captivated by the book in front of me. It doesn't usually pan out like this. In reality, two minutes in, I'm sweating, my butt hurts from sitting on tree roots, I realize I forgot the snacks, and I can't focus. So I close the book, go home, turn on the TV. A lot of us make this mistake when it comes to reading. We think it should feel romantic, like this landmark event in our day.
You know, we have this imagination that like, oh, reading time is like this luxurious thing. I'm in my armchair sipping scotch.
Kevin Wynn is the author of the novels My Documents and New Waves. And in 2017, he wrote an article for GQ called How to Read a Whole Damn Book Every Week.
You have to make it a more regular habit than that. Because if you just wait for all those times when you're drinking scotch, hopefully you don't drink that much scotch. Hope you read more than you drink scotch. But yeah, if you wait for all those moments, you're never going to finish a book.
Whether your reading daydreams involve you at the park, in an armchair, at a lakeside retreat, or on the beach, what if you let those go and allowed yourself to read whenever, wherever? Because you don't want to miss out. Reading is a joy. Marianne Wolfe is a cognitive neuroscientist at UCLA, an author of Reader Come Home, The Reading Brain in a Digital World.
An author gives us a chance to leap into the lives and thoughts and feelings of others, a chance to leap into thoughts that we've never had before. And a chance to even appreciate that in the midst of solitude, we are not alone.
On this episode of Life Kit, we have four tips to help you read more this summer. And Marianne says if you've fallen off the wagon, you can get back on.
I'm telling you, that will happen. But you have to relearn those muscles. It just takes time. That's coming up after the break.
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Picking up where we left off, our takeaway one is read when you can, wherever you are.
The hardest part about reading a book is just like opening the book.
Kevin Wynn says instead of waiting for that perfect, distraction-free, cinematic moment, look for smaller chances throughout the day. Standing on the train platform, there's a few minutes to read. In a long line for lunch, you can get a few pages in. Read when you're early to school pickup or when you're waiting for your clothes to be done at the laundromat. And if you commute to work, well, that's a gimme.
driving to work, it's audiobook time. You get on the subway, it's time to like open the book. I'm not going to play video games on my phone or listen to a podcast. It's really easy to have that kind of discipline because it's sort of like a sequestered part of your day where you decide I'm doing this thing at this time.
Now to set yourself up for success here, you need to have books within reach.
I have an upstairs book and a downstairs book and a car book and a bathroom book and a bathtub book. Juanita Giles is the executive director of the Virginia Children's Book Festival.
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