I haven’t quit entirely, but I have cut down by a huge margin. This coincides with my quitting smoking, which I did 18 months ago. Most of my reading up until then was done during the times I smoked (which added up to about 1.5 hours a day, anywhere from 45 to 90 pages worth). Now, I just don’t have time to do it (although I have managed to read about 10 books since I quit smoking). I miss the reading, but I don’t miss the smoking.
Nowadays, almost all of my reading comes from the web in general and this site most of all.
Well, maybe, but everything written down hasn’t been read by me yet!
I read a bit less than I used to, since school and work take up so much more of my life, but I always have a book going. Sometimes two at once. Having an hour commute to and from school every day gives me plenty of time to read a book in little bits. Of course, sometimes a book is so good I keep reading when I get home, and I end up leaving my studying to the very last minute, like this week, when *Alias Grace * kept me from studying for a hematology quiz. Without that daily commute, though, I can see how it would be easy to abandon my books on their shelves, saying “I’ll read them later” and never quite getting around to it. But I think the TV and the internet would disappear long before I came to the decision to cut books from my life for lack of time.
So, no, I haven’t quit reading books. And I hope I never will. The only thing I don’t like about books is that I just don’t have what it takes to write one.
Thanks, Devil’s Grandmother. You have no idea how much that relieves me. Or maybe you do. At any rate, I feel better knowing that reading hasn’t abandoned me for a younger, more attractive girl who can put her legs behind her head . . . or something.
Miss Purl, I had the same problem as my writing started to improve, only instead of analyzing meaning, I was reading the sentences for how well they were written. “Hm, that’s an interesting phrase,” or “Ew, the editor should have suggested a rewrite there.” I lost tolerance for some of the more poorly written books I was able to enjoy before (Rita Mae Brown, I’m looking at you). Eventually, I stopped (somewhat) reading the sentences instead of the stories and was back to enjoying most books (Rita Mae Brown is still an exception).
I don’t read as many books as I used to, partially because I read on the Internet a lot, and partially because I have a lot more hobbies than I had as a kid. I have about 30 unread books sitting around just waiting for me, but I’m currently reading three different ones right now and don’t want to start on another one until I finish at least two of those. I still read a lot, and I still love books and can get sucked into them, but it’s just not as much as it used to be.
I still read but not as much as I used to. When I was in school (and at my second and third jobs, where I was convenience store clerk and hospital janitor, respectively), I read all the time and would typically go through a 300 page book every two to three days depending on how much time I had to kill but now that I have a job where I can watch TV, I do that to kill time instead of reading, and, when at home, I’m usually online reading messageboards instead.
I love to read but I’m lazy and it takes more effort to read a novel than it does to turn my brain off for a TV show or just read snippets of conversation on here or one of the other boards I read.
Not a good sign unless you have health problems. I have problems reading because of a neck injury that makes a good book next to torture. I have also slowed down due to age. I’m flat tired when I get home from work.
However, along the same vane, I go through the newspaper like it’s a page flipping contest. Most of the information I want to gleen from the paper is contained in the title so I skip over the article. Ex: “Michael Jackson goes to court”. Yah, so? I want to read about this why?
back to topic. If you enjoyed reading before and you stopped you should ask yourself why.
I won’t say I’ve quit reading books, but I have gotten out of the habit of it. Every once in a while, I’ll build up a good head of steam and start it up again, but things just pile up and take up my time, and it’s hard for me to resume again. It doesn’t help that I find it easier and easier to fall asleep when I’m reading now (chalk that up to getting older). I hate that it’s this way, but until things settle a bit in my life, I don’t know if I can expect it to change much anytime soon.
The last book I read completely was Richard Nixon’s memoirs about 4 years ago. I haven’t read an entire book since. I guess I don’t have a good reason. I was another intense reader as a child, but have lost that passion I guess.
I am a compulsive reader. I have three books going at all times. If I don’t have a book to read at lunch, I will read training manuals, which explains why I am the only person in the region who has read all the training manuals. I have library cards to four different library systems within a ten mile radius of my house. That’s six different libraries I can get to in 15 minutes or less. I can’t imagine gettting bored with reading. There are whole sections of the library I haven’t even started on yet.
The only thing that has changed recently is that, even if I am reading something from my favorite author of the day, I am quicker to toss it aside if it doesn’t grab my attention. I am less tolerant of a lousy effort. I have recently returned three books after reading only a chapter or two, from long-running series of books. I no longer feel compelled to read every word of every book in the series.
In the case of fiction, it’s because the author generally takes the story in a direction that I don’t really care about. This is true regardless of genre or author. That, or I have the plot figured out by the time I finish the first page.
In the case of non-fiction, I pretty much just don’t care anymore. For a variety of reasons. One is that the authors generally have their central premise in their opening paragraphs, they spend the rest of the book just rehashing their premise with added tidbits to pad out the book. If it’s something technical, then I generally don’t have the patience to wade through all the crap just to find out whatever it is I want to know.
I’ll second that. In college (English major!), in addition to assigned reading, I read a shitload of extracurricular books, probably because I didn’t have a TV. After I graduated I actually got sick of reading. Burnt out, I guess. It got much better over time. and I think I even enjoy it more because I know I’m not gonna have to write a goddamned paper on whatever it is I’m reading.
I have to agree with the OP, in that I have been “unable” to stick with books for a number of years now. As a teen, I used to read all the time. Now, I cannot stick with any book for more than about a chapter. I’ve bought several books I was interested in reading, but they just end up laying around.
I still read quite a lot of magazines, and I read a ton online…so maybe it has something to do with that. I don’t know.
I pretty much stopped reading books after I discovered the SDMB and everything else associated with the Internet. Not that I blame them for it; I just don’t seem to have the motivation for reading I once did. I had a friend recently who couldn’t believe that I didn’t have a library card, despite the library being only a few blocks away. She would read a book about every two weeks, and couldn’t comprehend that I spent my time doing other things that meant more to me (usually music-related, not Internet-related). I have lots of books in my to-read pile, where they’ll probably remain until I die.
That’s not far off the mark to how I feel. I’m in my mid-40’s and just don’t want to waste my time reading something that goes nowhere. I attribute some of that to age and some of it to a lack of energy. I’m mentally tired when I get off work and it requires a really good book to get me to read it. I’ve actually stopped reading bad books in the middle of them. Times to short.
