I’ve seen that in some ways it seems like I’m weird when it comes to how I treat reading, for me it’s not really something I do to get smarter or to learn stuff mainly at least, it’s just entertainment, when many others would sit down in front of the TV (Nothing bad about that, some times it’s just a good way to decompress after a long day) I sit down with my book, and read a bit. Since it’s something that’s replacing things like TV, I don’t end up reading mostly challenging stuff, sure I’m sure it has its good sides as well, but a lot of the time when I sit down to read, I’ve already been through a hard day of work and thinking and problem solving, and a challenging read is not really quite what I’m there for.

One of the best things that I did for my reading was getting an e-book, it makes it so much easier to getting books that aren’t that popular where I am, it’s really easy to carry around, so at the same time of being something that I have around me all the time, always ready, it also opened worlds of new stuff that I just wouldn’t be exposed to otherwise.

Even when reading books that on the surface aren’t that deep, or challenging, I think there is something about how you experience a book, spend some times in other’s shoes with a bit of a distance, I think it’s helped me a lot to be more open to how other people are, it’s easier to empathise with someone when you have a bit more of an idea about how they think about things.

There really is something magical about being out on a walk, sitting down for a rest, and reading a chapter or two on a bench, either in a park with people milling around doing their stuff, on a little hidden away place in my lunch break, or sitting on a tree trunk in a place with a good view, and birds that are making bird sounds around me, it makes me feel happy.

The one thing that I have found the most challenging is how much steam I lost after struggling with a book and the aftermath of procrastrinating and how hard it was to just get back into a good groove with reading afterwards. I was slowly getting stuck in the book Green Mars and it irked me more and more, it was something that was creeping in on my until it kind of exploded, and I just didn’t want to continue on, and for almost a week afterwards I found myself just not wanting to read at the times that I usually do enjoy it, I was playing around with something else I was having at hand, or just don’t set off the time I normally do for reading to do it. But now after having finished one book afterwards I think I slowly have gotten into it again, I’m again exited to continue on reading. So much so that I went on another spree of getting books, so that I have something more to look foreward to.

I have also gotten a good feel for what books I will enjoy, so I look through some specific subreddits like /r/sciencefictionromance and I have a pretty good hitrate in finding things I enjoy by looking for recommendation threads and what people say about the books, I’ve found that more than looking for specific tags or themes, what usually works for me is the vibe, if someone describes a vibe or feeling from a book that is something that I enjoy, I’ve found that I’m more likely to enjoy it, even though I have never seen firefly for example, I have learnt that if someone says that it has a firefly vibe, I’m likely to enjoy it. I have also found specific things that I know that makes me enjoy a book, like found family, it’s something that I’m most likely going to enjoy.

Like with everything else, learning your own taste and what you’re going to like is something one gets better with with some experience, I’m hitting stuff that I’m going to like way more now than what I used to, and as a result I tend to end up to rate most of what I read rather highly, now when I rate a book I also go for my experience of reading it, and not something more objective or fancy, I don’t really care much about deeper themes, if it’s something universal that many people will enjoy and so on, some times a book will get a higher rating just because I was in a good mood, or because I have a good memory of sitting outside in the sun enjoying myself while reading it, less helpful for others maybe, but I don’t really know if I can really be objective, so I just rate my experience of it.

One thing that I have found to be almost more important than the things in the book, a fluid writing style, with focus on characters will most likely make my enjoyment of a book go up a lot. If an author wants to brag about the words that they know, it’s going to be a detriment to me, I will enjoy the book less, sure I like being dumped into a sci-fi scenario with a lot of stuff unexplained and weird made up stuff that you have to figure out what is, but if the writing is dry, and I have to look up words every page, it’s just not fun to read.

It’s funny how something that is mainly entertainment to me, also kind of is a skill, I feel myself getting better at reading, better at finding stuff that I will enjoy, and better at motivating myself to read. In effect it’s pretty similar to playing games, with the one caveat that I will usually get to the end of a book that I enjoy, it’s the main drawback I feel with playing games, that if there is something I struggle with in it, it’s likely that I won’t be able to overcome it, a book is so rewarding in that as long as you keep on reading, you will get to the end, and you will get to experience the whole thing, there is something to be said about that that is nice.