Confessions from a Lapsed Reader
Forgive me, Authors, for it has been roughly five years since I satisfactorily finished a book. Technically I finished a handful in that time, but of the ones I remember, I completed one angrily and the other was a big, fat, bored sigh. It’s been a barren wasteland.
This is hard to admit, I am ashamed. I went for a socially distant hike this weekend with one of my dear friends who lent me three of the left-for-dead books by my bed. She’s also a great writer and a smart person and I wanted to tell her that I couldn’t read what she left so thoughtfully on my front porch weeks ago and the admission stuck in my throat. I’m not a reader anymore. Can I really say that out loud?
I’ve always been a proud reader, since my pre-kindergarten days when my mom would yell at me to stop reading the Sunday comics or we’d be late to church. Whatever, God, I’m reading. Look at me, I can read, what else can I read? I advanced happily in the reading groups at school, pored over the Scholastic catalogs, started sneaking Danielle Steele and Sidney Sheldon well before I should have known what a male member is. I got in trouble for my hidden copies of Judy Blume’s Forever and Stephen King’s Carrie, both of which haunted me in different ways.
Reading for pleasure runs in my family, 90% of the group conversations with my sisters and mother are about who finished which book to be sent to whom and what should be ordered next. My father reads detective novels, large tomes of non-fiction, and lengthy Economist articles alike, and would like an hour so of your time to tell you about them. At 27 I took a job as a reading teacher, and met my future husband: the head of the teaching department who has spent his entire adult life reading to himself and reading aloud and teaching reading and talking about reading and getting others to read and talk about it too. These are my people, all these readers. They are what I used to be. What the hell happened?
I think it started five years ago, if memory serves. I started chemo treatment for my second cancer and generous friends dropped books at my doorstep along with scented candles and blankets and food for my kids. I was really, really tired though; my convalescence was 10 days in bed too fatigued to do anything but watch a screen. My sister sat by my bed and watched TV with me, I barely looked at her. I languished. When my blood levels bounced back and headed to the chemo chair, I pushed toward productivity. Armed with my laptop instead of a book, I worked and Facebooked and wrote and surfed and emailed. Reading didn’t seem like the right use of my very limited non-brain-dead time. I didn’t want to escape reality, I wanted to change it.
The era immediately after cancer was fraught with healing both emotionally and physically. Sometimes holding a book exacerbated either my lymphedema or neuropathy, it’s hard to tell what would cause the faint forearm numbness. It was also hard to anticipate what would cause an emotional upheaval. I thrilled to open the new Ann Patchett and raged when her main character had cancer. I literally threw the book down and have never reopened it.
That doesn’t quite explain what’s happening now, though. I am not as fragile as I was then. It’s possible that the proverbial chemo brain has shortened my attention span; maybe some residual damage makes me skim or not finish “long” Facebook posts that genuinely interest me. I know treatment damaged me physically in other ways, why would my thinking organ be spared over my digestive system? Maybe.
Another thought occurred to me after my weekend hike, though, perhaps refracted by my companion’s writerly presence. Maybe I’m not reading because I’m struggling to write. I can’t read a piece in someone else’s voice when I can’t find my own. I also have unfinished essays and blog posts and play scripts and letters. I’m not just a lapsed reader, I’m a lapsed word-lover.
I miss it. I miss being lost in a novel, staying up too late reading, unable to resist the pull of the next chapter. I can’t remember the last time anything kept my eyes open past 9:30. I miss being delighted by language, like when I first read Tom Robbins and was constantly astounded by his similes and turns of phrase. I haven’t underlined text in a decade.
I know there are amazing books out there waiting for me. I believe that inspired authors have crafted works of heartbreaking genius and staggering craft that would deeply effect my heart or mind or life or reading habits for the better. I get it. I’m just uninspired to pick them up, wholly not believing that I can muster the will and grit to give them proper attention. Isn’t that sad? What is a lapsed reader to do?
I have come clean, which helps a little. The first step is admitting you have a problem. I confess and now humbly ask for my penance. Just please don’t make me read that Ann Patchett, I will skip to her next one.
