Since being out of high school, I’ve been slowly returning to a lot of my childhood hobbies – reading, colouring, gaming. Anything that brought me joy as a child seems to still bring me joy even after all these years. And it’s been such a bittersweet feeling rediscovering these lost hobbies of mine.
School entirely sucked out all the fun that reading brought me. It used to be something I did casually when I got home from school to unwind, give myself a break, and let my imagination run wild. But it slowly became something that I had to do instead of something I wanted to do.
I’m also on StoryGraph! Feel free to follow me over there if you’d like to keep up with my reads in real-time. I won’t be making another book/reading related post until either the end of the year or at the start of 2025!
During my time in school, all of my reading energy went into books that were force-fed to me instead of being able to choose what books I read. This meant that once I got home from school, I barely had any reading energy leftover – I couldn’t pleasure read anymore as it had become a chore.
And while I do agree that the books I read with my class were critical for developing empathy, I just wish we didn’t read so quickly. We barely had any time to decompress before we jumped right into the next one, before learning the next biggest life lesson at the time.
I went from having a bookshelf in my room that was filled to the brim with all these books, to essentially nothing in what felt like the span of a day. At least that’s how it feels now when I look back on it. I still remember collecting the Rainbow Magic series, and The Cupcake Diaries series – the two series that stand out the most in my memory. The last time I remember picking up a book to pleasure read when I was younger, I think I was around 12 or 13. It wasn’t until I was about 19-ish that I picked up a book on my own accord.
I had the most trouble with doing the book analyses on time. I liked to spend my time with my answers, especially if it was on a book that I enjoyed, and then add my other classes on to that workload. It was a lot to say the least. I still managed to get them done of course, I mean I had to right? But they were never completed in the way that I wanted them to be.
Book analyses are a whole other conversation in itself. They were fun when I was allowed to interpret things in my own ways and when I was given the room to explore ideas and themes. And I’ve always had a dislike towards artistically driven subjects because teachers policed what I was allowed to submit and in turn, policing what I was allowed to think and feel about the topics we were reading about. I wasn’t ever allowed to explore my own ideas unless it fit within scholarly standards, to draw my own conclusions about things, to learn how I can be a better person because of the topics I had just read about.
But now that I’ve had some time away from book reports, I’ve slowly been getting back into reading. I’m nowhere near the amount I was reading when I was younger – I used to drill through books like no tomorrow – but I’m trying to take my time with each book to really sit with the themes, the characters, the plot. Some have taken me weeks, and sometimes months, to finish and that’s completely okay. It just gives me more time to digest the story which means more time spent thinking about the themes and in turn, I can learn more with each book I read.
I’ve also been discovering which genres I like instead of being force-fed a certain genre, as well as the lengths of books. I don’t have to read long books if I don’t want to, just like I don’t have to read shorter books or novellas if I don’t want to. I can also choose to read series or stand alone books. I can choose to avoid certain themes or triggers entirely, or I can choose to read them.
It’s been refreshing to regain control of my relationship with reading. If I’m not enjoying it, instead of just giving up on something that I love (and something that brings me joy), I ask myself how I can make it easier for me to enjoy it again. How I can reignite the spark and find what once was. It’s the exact same process I go through when I’m bored of my music – I listen to my Release Radar and Discover Weekly playlists along with my Daylists and try to find a song that reminds me of why I love music. Surely the same would apply to reading, right?
Something else that has helped reignite my love for books and reading is TikTok. And not because of book-tokers. But because of librarians. I’m sure there’s plenty more out there than I’m aware of, but there’s been two elementary school librarians that I follow, and both of them are the most wholesome accounts that I follow on TikTok.
I see accounts like these, their videos of them unboxing new books that their viewers have sent in, and wonder why book and reading influencers don’t do the same. And while I understand that an influencer and an elementary school student are two completely different demographics, that doesn’t mean that these influencers (who are literally getting paid to read, some who receive copies of books from authors for free) can’t do the same.
Why aren’t they sending in books to their local schools? Not just elementary and middle, but high schools too. I wish more authors sent their books into schools and libraries as opposed to influencers. I understand why they do it, but libraries could benefit from them more than the influencers can. Influencers will more than likely only read it once and do what they’re contracted to do in order to promote it on their socials; whereas students are more than likely to make circulate it countless times.
I just think that if you love reading so much, you’d want to give that joy to someone else. To give back. There’s so many kids out there who have parents that don’t believe in their children owning a personal library since their kids have access to their school’s library for free – at that point, why buy books?
It’s been a fun path to be on again because of my control and freedom within reading. It’s been so freeing to be able to discover what genres I like reading about, and to be able to choose whether or not I want to engage with certain genres. There’s no pressure to finish books, chapters or pages by a certain deadline.
Bringing this back to BookTok for a second, I find it so interesting how there’s this normalcy around reading as fast as possible. They format their account in a way that makes it seem like the only thing they do is read. That they don’t have jobs, or have classes/homework. That they don’t spend time with their friends or family.
At least that’s the way these accounts appear to me. I hate how it sets this precedent where we have to be reading every chance we get during our day, when that’s not the case whatsoever. Honestly there’s a lot of things that we do as a society, both physically and virtually, where I feel we’d all benefit from slowing down and taking a breather. But that could be a whole post on it’s own if I’m being honest here.
Anyway, that’s all from me today. Thank you for taking time out of your day to read this; means a lot.
To my fellow readers, what’s your favourite genre and/or series? I love hearing about what everyone is into. And to my non-readers, what made you stop? I’m curious. Let me know by leaving a comment!
Catch you in the next one 🙂
– julzy
julzy 
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