On Reading "Proper" Books
13:55
September 2010 and September 2014 my whole life revolved around reading books. Aged eighteen, I moved from London up to Leeds where I spent the next four years studying English Literature. My course required me to read approximately two novels per week during term-time, but I was almost always reading something for pleasure on top of that. It didn't take long for that volume of literary consumption to become normal and slowly but surely my whole world became saturated in other people's voices and stories.
There's a great pleasure to reading and I was lucky enough to discover it early on in life. There are two particular moments where I remember being entranced by story-telling; the first was when my dad finished reading me Charlotte's Web. He read the entire book out-loud, chapter by chapter, and when it was all over I refused to believe that there wasn't any more. It was the first time that I had ached for an imaginary world to continue beyond the parameters of it's book. In contrast, my second formative story-telling moment came from a cassette tape full of Greek myths. I listened to that tape over and over, absorbing every last detail of the story and marvelling at the way in which my imagination could extend the content I'd been given. Something about that book and that tape made me hungry for literature, for stories, and going on to study English Literature became an inevitability.
Yet, when I finished my MA and moved back to London I just couldn't bring myself to pick up a book. I think I spent at least three months completely avoiding them. I've talked about this weird phenomenon with quite a few people and it seems like quite a common response. I've come to think of it as my post-university "burn-out", where you just can't bring yourself to do something that once seemed so easy and fun. When I finally did start reading again all I had an appetite for were the novels that university had always denied me. I dove headfirst into science fiction and graphic novels, and I devoured blogpost after blogpost of fashion, beauty and lifestyle mutterings. And then something even more disconcerting began to happen.
Towards the end of this summer I started to react to my reading choices. I became self conscious of the books that I was reading - and, even more so, of the books that I wasn't reading. This feeling crystallised when I found that I couldn't bring myself to finish the children's fictional trilogy that I'd been enjoying so much in the months previously. It took me a while to identify what exactly it was that I was feeling, and I didn't really like the answer that I found. It was shame. It was a weird throw-back to university where I'd always strived so hard to be a "good student", and to do "well". In this scary new adult world, where so much feels out of my control, I was trying to cling onto literature as a lifeboat. If I was reading "proper" books - and other people knew that I was still reading "proper" books - then somehow this felt like intellectual security.
The post-university burn-out is very real and it's disconcerting, but I've realised that it wasn't a break-up, it was just a rough patch and nothing has really changed. I'm still a book-worm and I'm always going to be one. I will always love reading books, from the silliest to the most serious, but I have to remember that when you're reading for yourself - for your own happiness - there is no such thing as a "proper" book.
It's true that these days I might find essays on photography move moving than some novels, but I have to remember that once there was nothing more powerful than an anthropomorphised spider. Interest, passion and motivation often come from the most unlikely of places, and it's so important to allow yourself to stumble across them, wherever they might be.
It's true that these days I might find essays on photography move moving than some novels, but I have to remember that once there was nothing more powerful than an anthropomorphised spider. Interest, passion and motivation often come from the most unlikely of places, and it's so important to allow yourself to stumble across them, wherever they might be.
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