On Creating a Habit of Reading

How do you make time to read?

This week instead of writing about a particular book, I wanted to think about the question a Twitter friend asked me awhile back about how I created a habit of reading. I’m probably the worst person to ask this question of, to be honest, because I don’t feel that I ever worked to create the habit. It’s more that I’ve just always had it. Still, I answered somewhat flippantly that I read as much as I do because I don’t watch television.

That’s true, but I answered again, this time more seriously, that while I’ve always been a regular reader, connecting with other readers online (first through my blog, which I started in 2006, and then through Twitter and book review sites) has changed my reading habits. Reading blogs by people from all over the world made me realize how many books there are that I had never heard of (this is still the case). I saw what other people were reading and wanted to read it too, which meant I was adding b­ook after book to my to-be-read list, and the more fellow readers I discovered, the longer the list got. And that made me want to read faster and read more.

Actually, to back up a bit, being a part of online book culture inspired me to start keeping a TBR list, which I never did before I started my blog. This list has taken various forms over time, but it’s now in two parts, one at LibraryThing of the books I own but haven’t read yet and the other at Goodreads of the books I would like to read that I don’t own (I forget why I use these two sites this particular way, but it works.) Online book culture also got me started keeping track of my reading. I can’t believe I used to not do this! When I started, I kept simple lists, and then I began tracking more information such as genre, publication date, author gender, author nationality, etc.

It sounds weird to suggest that a great way to cultivate a habit of reading is to spend more time online, but perhaps it’s sort of true? Of course, I’m referring specifically to time spent online reading book blogs, chatting with people about books on Twitter, reading reviews, logging books on Goodreads, etc. But those activities have motivated me more than anything else to read more and to read differently.

Who knows what kind of books I would be reading now if I hadn’t begun a blog. But because of online book culture, I discovered new kinds of old books; I used to read a lot of classics (part of this was inclination and part was college and grad school) but I discovered lesser-known classics of the kind published by Virago and NYRB. I started reading more contemporary books (a lot, perhaps too many). I started reading contemporary works in translation. I started reading more diversely, in terms of race, ethnicity, sexuality, and nationality. I started reading more books from small presses. I started reading weirder books.

That’s all about motivation—and it doesn’t even touch on the pleasures of reading itself! I’m writing this assuming we all know about those. There’s also the matter of finding time to read, the thing that actually makes it a habit. I’m always curious about how people fit it into their day. I want to know when people read and why and how much and how they find their books.

For me, most of my reading happens in the evening. During quieter times of the year, I read in the late afternoon as well. Those quieter times come when my job (teaching English at a community college) is less demanding, meaning summers and winter break, and occasionally when I’m in a grading lull. I listen to audiobooks whenever I can, which means to and from work (back in the days when I actually went to work), while doing chores, and while taking walks.

A lot of this is determined by what my son Cormac is up to: times he is occupied or asleep are times I can read, which is why evening hours are so precious. He reads a lot, but so far he doesn’t sit down for lengthy periods of time with a book, so it’s not an activity we do much together (excluding times I read aloud to him of course). Late afternoon hours are also precious because that’s when he’s allowed screen time, usually spent watching videos or (these days) playing Minecraft. That’s when I hurriedly grade some papers, answer work emails, do chores, or, if I’m lucky, read a little.

This brings me back to not watching television. If I watched television, when would I read?? I did watch Derry Girls last December, but that’s because life in a pandemic winter break is extremely slow and I read enough during the day to feel like I wanted to do something else in the evening. I don’t find myself in that situation often. As for going out in the evenings, back in the days when it was possible to go out, we did now and then, but we’re not extremely social people, and being a parent means thinking carefully about what social events are worth paying a babysitter for. A better situation, if it’s possible, is to see friends during the day with child in tow, or while he’s spending time with my husband, and then keeping my evenings free to read.

There are other factors at play here: I’m a slow reader, so if I want to read a lot I need to devote a lot of time to it. I spend a lot of time on Twitter, which could possibly be my TV time if I wanted it to be. And then there are the hours I spend riding my bicycle, which could be more reading time or time for gardening or cleaning the house or learning how to do my job better, etc. etc. Or watching television. I tell myself I’ll catch up on all that great television when my son no longer wants to talk to me all day.

At any rate, I’ve been reading so long I no longer feel like myself if I don’t do it regularly, almost every day. It’s my quiet time, my way of escaping from everyday life, my way of settling my mind so I can fall asleep at night, my meditative practice. I guess that’s what being a regular reader comes down to: it becomes a part of who you are.

Don’t Forget About

Negroland by Margo Jefferson (Pantheon, 2015): this is a memoir about Margo Jefferson’s childhood in upper-crust Black society in Chicago. Her story is one of comfort and privilege but also of racism and the burdens of growing up female in mid- to late-twentieth-century America. It’s about being at odds with white culture but not fitting into other Black circles either. Jefferson also tells the stories of other Black writers, thinkers, and activists who occupied a similar cultural space as her family. The memoir is formally innovative, with shifts between first and third person as Jefferson looks at her life from the inside and the outside, from interior emotion to exterior judgments. It’s an important piece of American history as well as a self-aware, artfully told personal story.

Publishing This Week

Books I haven’t yet read that I’m adding to my TBR:

• The Lost Soul by Olga Tokarczuk, illustrated by Joanna Concejo and translated by Antonia Lloyd-Jones (Seven Stories Press): an illustrated book — suitable for kids or adults — about living a peaceful and full life, from the author of Flights and Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead.

• Tomorrow They Won’t Dare to Murder Us by Joseph Andras, translated by Simon Leser (Verso Fiction): a novel about a revolutionary who plants a bomb in Algiers during the Algerian war and what it means that this revolutionary is a European on the side of anti-colonialism.

• An Orphan World by Giuseppe Caputo, translated by Sophie Hughes and Juana Adcock (Charco Press): a novel about a father and son struggling to get by, staying put even after a horrible event rocks their neighborhood. A story of sexual liberation, homophobia, poverty, and love.

• The City of Good Death by Priyanka Champaneri (Restless Books): the winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, this novel is set in the Indian holy city of Banaras. It’s the story of the manager of a “death hostel” who shepherds the dying into a “good death.”

Recently Acquired

• Bina: A Novel in Warnings by Anakana Schofield (NYRB, 2021): I’d be tempted to buy this book based on the subtitle alone. The publisher copy says, “Bina is a woman who's had enough and isn't afraid to say so.” This is exactly my kind of book!

  

• Translation as Transhumance by Mireille Gansel, translated by Ros Schwartz (Feminist Press, 2017): every time I hear about this book I have to look up what “transhumance” is (the practice of moving livestock from one grazing ground to another in a seasonal cycle). This is about translation and exile, both memoir and what it means to be a translator.

• Event Factory by Renee Gladman (Dorothy Project, 2010): The first in a series of four novels about Ravicka, an invented city-state. This one is about a “linguist-traveler” who visits Ravicka, where an undefined crisis besets the city. I read Gladman’s essay collection Calamities recently, and she is a strange, unsettling, fascinating writer.

• Adrift: Fieldnotes from Almost-Motherhood by Miranda Ward (W&N, 2021): I’m not entirely sure, but I think this is out only in the UK. I like reading books about motherhood, pregnancy, miscarriage, so my husband bought this for me.

Currently Reading

• The Descent of Alette by Alice Notley (Penguin Books, 1996): a feminist epic poem. I read a lot about Alice Notley in Rachel Zucker’s book MOTHERs and decided to pick this up. Alette, the narrator, travels on the subway in search of a figure called the Tyrant.

• Aftershocks by Nadia Owusu (Simon and Schuster, 2021): a memoir using the metaphor of earthquakes to describe the author’s nomadic life. Told in scenes that shift back and forth in time, the narrative tells a story of loss, grief, family turmoil, and the challenges of being a mixed-race person who has a home everywhere and nowhere.

  

The Cormac Report

I’ve written before about how Cormac loves reading nonfiction. He has a ridiculous number of National Geographic Kids nature books and encyclopedias and he loves to pour over them endlessly. The result of all this reading is that he has an endless store of factual knowledge he loves to share with us. A lot.

He also loves reading biographies, and this is trickier territory. It’s one thing when he wants to tell me which dinosaur is bigger than the other or to make sure I know where the cerebellum is. It’s another thing entirely when he wants to know why Edgar Allan Poe wrote so much about death, as he recently learned from Who Was Edgar Allan Poe?, or why Poe’s wife was so young, or why some people think he drank himself to death. And what does it mean to drink yourself to death anyway? He has a book called I Am Anne Frank, so we have had to explain why she was in hiding and what made the Nazis so bad and, yes, there are still Nazis today. He has a book about Jesus, so we discuss what actually causes death when you’re being crucified (I’m not entirely sure) and also why people found Jesus threatening enough to want to kill. (And why do you say “Jesus!” when you’re mad, Mom?)

Cormac is eight, which is old enough to start learning some difficult things about life. But my goodness is it hard to figure out how much to say and how much to hold back. Fortunately, at least some of the time, Cormac lets us know when he’s heard as much as he can absorb. He has this way of saying a cheery, bright “Okay!” when he doesn’t want to talk about it anymore. If I try to explain further, he’ll repeat his cheery “Okay!” and give me the fake grin that means “shut up, Mom!” And I happily do.

Have a good week everyone!