But in the last few months, reading according to my mood hasn't been working so well for me. Possibly because the world and my feelings about it are so unsettled these days or maybe just because I've been letting mood entirely govern my reading choices for too long, lately I end up flitting from book to book, often finishing none of them. This leaves me pretty unsatisfied, as you might imagine, but I've noticed that being a mood reader has also led to other aspects of my reading life that don't always please me.
Neglecting the Library
The nature of checking books out of the library is that you have a specific book during a specific span of time. There's always the option to renew, of course, and you can take the same book out as many times as you like, but the general gist of the thing is that you read this book now. Add in library holds that might come available at any time, and the issue is compounded. None of this is terribly in line with mood reading. Nothing makes me want to read a book less than knowing I have to finish it by a certain date. (I blame grad school.) As a result, I tend to buy books rather than check them out of the library (because they will always be within reach of my hot little hands).
Buying Too Many Books
No such thing, right? Weeell. I'm blessed with a nice-sized house, but the space for books still isn't infinite. (Alas.) My recent book-buying M.O. of picking up two or three paperbacks that suit a current mood has our bookshelves sagging. And because my moods usually change faster than I can get through three books, I end up with unread books lying around. Which is great! Until I get paralyzed by too much choice. I want to read everything, but I can't, so I read nothing. *sad trombone*
Reading Less Diversely Than I Would Like
I am mentally committed to reading diversely in as many ways as I can squeeze into my reading time. I want to seriously up the number of authors of color I read, and the number of lesbian and trans* authors, and the amount of poetry, and and and. But, see, none of those things is a mood. So even though I have piles of books by diverse writers that I really want to read, unless one of them fits whatever particular mood I'm in, I just don't get around to them. While the other consequences of letting my reading choices be dictated entirely by mood have been making me less than fully satisfied with my reading life, this one makes me downright cross with myself. Reading diversely is something I value, and I'm letting it fall by the wayside. Get it together, girl!
In the years immediately after grad school, when my reading time was completely unfettered for the first time since... ever, I set out little reading challenges for myself. Sometimes they involved reading a themed book for each month (something about love in February, something about school in September), sometimes I simply picked a topic I was interested in and found a couple of books about it (maybe a novel and a piece of nonfic, or a memoir and a more scholarly work) and read them back to back. While I did complete most of those challenges, I found them constraining. They made reading too much like work. Now I think I've swung too far back the other way, letting my reading be completely freeform and thus ending up with a reading life that is largely directionless.
So for 2018, I have a plan. I'm picking three or four categories of books that I'd like to see myself read more of (I haven't decided exactly what they'll be yet, but you can bet that at least one of them will be to do with reading diversely), and I'm going to challenge myself to read ten books in each of those categories at any point throughout the year. Since I typically read 75-100 books in a year, this will mean forty to fifty percent of my reading should be directed reading in 2018. Combined with a modified book buying ban (stop. buying. three. of. the. same. kind. of. book. at. once.), it should still leave room for mood reading while giving my reading life more focus.
Are you a mood reader? How do you choose your reads/make room for directed reading?
I do a lot of mood reading too. And I sometimes (though less that I once did) get onto a subject and read several books in a row that fit together somehow. Often a good novel with a historical setting will send me to some non-fiction on the same time period and place. I also like to browse my own shelves as though I were in a library, and you know, I often find a nifty surprise that way!
ReplyDelete"I also like to browse my own shelves as though I were in a library, and you know, I often find a nifty surprise that way!"
DeleteIt's almost as if all those books were put there by someone who knows what you like to read! ;-)