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How Weird is a Non-Reading Week?

by

Lauren Roberts

Very. Fortunately, it’s also rare in my life.

Reading has always had the power to soothe me, to take me into its world and to dismiss the cares of mine. But not this week. For some reason, I have picked up and put down a half-dozen books—An Alphabetical Life by Wendy Werris, Few Eggs and No Oranges by Vera Hodgson, California Rising: The Life and Times of Pat Brown by Ethan Rarick, The Yellow-Lighted Bookshop by Lewis Buzbee, The Worst Hard Time by Timothy Egan, The Secret of Lost Things by Sheridan Hay—unable to connect with any of them in that meaningful way.

This is unusual because connecting with a book has always happened for me. Not every book every time, of course. As you no doubt have experienced, what enthralls you at one time or one point in your life can leave you shrugging your shoulders at another. I believe that by listening to your emotional needs you can find the “right” book for almost any time.

On Readerville, there have been discussions of reading droughts, the times like this week for me when nothing clicked. I probably could have forced it, but what kind of reading is that? Not the kind I want. Not the kind that is fueled by love or passion for the written word and what it can do.

I haven’t worried about it (except as fodder for this column) because I sense that if I browse my books by looking through them, reading a paragraph wherever it suits me out of whatever I pick up, of  studying images and reading captions that I will recapture my derailed reader’s self.  

It’s not the first time this has happened. In previous (albeit, shorter) times I have retrieved my readerly spirit by working with or around my books—cleaning out bookshelves, removing, dusting and replacing the books. Or I may shuffle them around in the every hopeful yet admittedly hopeless quest of finding more space on the shelves. Adding titles to a database (formerly an Excel spreadsheet, now Book Collectorz) can also re-intrigue my passion since it requires me to pick up and spend time with each book as I seek out the needed information.

I have come to think that maybe what I am experiencing is not so much a drought as a surfeit. It’s an odd word to use in this circumstance, but I recently bought a large number of books at one time. Could it be that wanting to read them all now has left me feeling so overwhelmed that I can read none of them. I am reminded of Alvin Toffler, who, in his 1970 best seller, Future Shock, argued that an accelerated rate of technological and social change leaves people suffering from “shattering stress and disorientation.” The term he coined was “information overload.”

Is it possible that I have been having a sort of literary overload, that bringing too many books I want to read all at once into my home in such a short period of time (one day) could be producing this reading disconnect? I don’t know. I’ve done this before without the same result. Perhaps this time, though, there were other factors that contributed to the overloaded feeling to the point that even reading felt not like a desired, wonderful escape but simply another element with which to deal.

Apparently, though, I have found through my browsing, my cleaning and re-shelving, and my database work a way back. As I finish up this column, surrounded by the books I took off their shelves in order to list  them at the beginning, I can feel tiny vibrating threads of interest at work in my brain. I feel my breath beginning to take on a heightened excitement. I can feel a tingling running along my arms and down to my hands that will soon be holding a book. I can feel the passion returning.

Excuse me. I’m off to read.


Almost since her childhood days of
Mother Goose, Lauren has been giving her opinion on books to anyone who will listen. That “talent” eventually took her out of magazine writing and into book reviewing in 2000 for an online review site where she cut her teeth (as well as a few authors). Stints as book editor for her local newspaper and contributing editor to Booklist and Bookmarks magazines has reinforced her belief that she has interesting things to say about books. Lauren shares her home with several significant others including three cats, 850 bookmarks and approximately 1,000 books that, whether previously read or not, constitute her to-be-read stack. She is a member of the National Books Critics Circle (NBCC) and Book Publicists of Southern California. You can reach her at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  

 
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