How I got myself back into reading
There was a time in my life when I used to read a lot. It was when Harry Potter and Twilight were at their peak of popularity and I was an avid teenage reader. However, that changed a lot over the years, and little by little, I went from reading a book monthly to not even one a year. But that changed when the pandemic started; I needed to travel to different worlds somehow, whilst I couldn’t do it in real life, so I pushed myself to read. To read 20, 30 and now 32 books in one year.
By Nicky Goslow –@nickygoslow
Back home, I probably have like 20 brand new books that I bought and I never touched. I used to love to go to bookshops and get one once in a while, but then I would just put it somewhere in my room and forget about their existence five minutes later. They’re probably full of dust right now.
After that, while traveling, I found one thousand excuses to not grab a book for years. I carried the same one for all the time I spent in Australia, and I always found reasons to not read and do anything else instead. The fun fact was that I wanted to become a writer… one who never read anything else other than short posts on Instagram or the subtitles of foreign movies.
It didn’t seem to bother me, though, and it took me a long while till I finally decided to read again. Thanks to COVID, actually. I had so much spare time while we were in lockdown that I decided to finally read a book that I got from Tūranga, Christchurch’s library. It was called “She speaks” and it was about women’s speeches that changed the world. I thought, “if not now, when?”, and started to go through the pages.
From zero to 20 books
That book started it all. It made me feel empowered whilst creating a sort of urgency for doing my part in the world. It was enlightening and encouraging, and I wondered how many things I didn’t know just yet and how much I could learn by reading other authors too. But I’m pretty good at feeling bored easily or, more than that, getting into something new before even completing the previous plan.
However, I’m really good at achieving personal goals to prove to myself that I can do it, even when I might have all the odds against me; that’s how I did two massive treks, like the way of Santiago de Compostela and the Everest Base Camp in the first place. So I decided to set a new objective: read a certain amount of books for the rest of the year.
As it was already March, I thought about setting a doable amount of books for the next nine months, and that’s how 20 came to be. But what was I going to read? Which were going to be the chosen 20 and why? Should they all be best-sellers, non-fiction, memoirs, or fantasies? Should I pick a certain type of author or just whatever I could get?
The first thing to consider about this first attempt at a book challenge was that I was living in a city with a wonderful and massive library from where I could borrow books for free, so I could just go and check out some of the options any day after work, and that’s what I did.
I picked books about feminism, some others written by my favourites novelists, and a few random ones that caught my attention by their plot and characters. I started a new note on my phone where I would add my readings and the day that I finished them, so I could be aware of how many I was reading per month and how many more I had left to reach my goal. I also posted a story on my Instagram about every finished book and a little opinion of it, so maybe I could inspire others to read a little bit more too.
That year on December 31st, I was still a whole book away from my goal, so I took one from my flatmate’s personal shelf and committed to finishing it before midnight, no matter how. I was so close to doing it that I couldn’t give up now; that’s how I spent the entire last day of the year reading “This is going to hurt” by Adam Kay. A book with 285 pages that I finished at 7:30 pm, right before having dinner with my friends and saying goodbye to a hectic 2020. It was intense, but I have made it!
Turning an objective into a tradition
In 2021 I decided to repeat the plan, but this time I was going to aim higher. I wanted to prove to myself that I could read more than what I have done the year before, so I increased the goal by 10 titles. On average, I read 2.5 books per month, and they were mainly about human behavior, trauma, cancer, feminism, romance, inspiring people, and non-fiction. All topics that I wanted to learn about, through people/authors who inspired me to write down my own ideas.
Little by little, I was able to identify writers and have an opinion about their writing skills and styles. Through them I learnt how I wanted to express myself, while my English vocabulary improved considerably book after book. I gained a lot more confidence to write in a different language, and most importantly: I noticed how reading became a good part of my daily routine. Sometimes I even wake up earlier just so I could read a few pages before going to work, or I would read during my breaks, while waiting for a friend, or just in a cafe enjoying a day off.
The library obviously helped a lot, as I could just walk there to pick up some classics, but also the most popular best-sellers without spending anything at all. To be honest, I am not certain if I could have done it in Chile, as libraries weren’t my thing when I was there, so I’m not even aware of the quality of them back home. And also, books are way too expensive to afford 20 or 30 per year, especially if you were a journalist like me with a very low wage.
Nevertheless, now I can’t see my life without books around me (how Hermione Granger does that sound?!). They have become an important part of my days as entertainment and a resource of knowledge. My curiosity has grown bigger since the first book I took to initiate the first challenge, and now I feel like I want to do and know more. There are so many authors that I haven’t read just yet and so many titles that I keep on my list to read after I finish the one that I’m currently into.
It was pretty hard at the beginning, though. It was easy to find excuses to do anything else but picking up a book. In the past, I would rather watch Netflix or hang out with friends, but now I feel like I manage my time differently, more wisely, and I can still do everything that I used to do, plus reading dozens of books a year.
The perks of reading and how it helped me
During 2022, I’m planning on reading 32 books, including the seven ones from the Harry Potter saga, which I have only read once a long time ago, when they all came out for the very first time. That’s why -on January 1st- while watching the Harry Potter Reunion, I thought that it was time for me to get into the wizardly world one more time, and now in English!
That is definitely one of the most exciting parts of the whole idea, as this is going to be my first time reading the same books in two different languages. But also because I remembered when I was younger and I tried to read “The Deathly Hallows” in English, but the whole thing seemed impossible to achieve, as I wasn’t bilingual just yet and I felt very overwhelmed, so I couldn’t do more than wait until the Spanish version was finally available. Now, 15 years later, I’ll finally read what I couldn’t do when I was 17.
Becoming a reader after all this time completely away from books has given me the opportunity to reconnect with the person that I was before. It gave me the chance to remember as well how much I love reading and how a couple of pages can teletransport you to another world. And doing all that gave me better tools to become a writer too, plus some unlimited ideas to use in my own plots.
Through reading, I started to feel more confident with my writing, which helped me a lot when I had to do the IELTS test to apply to international universities. Having some previous experience with more academic texts was definitely an advantage when the reading part of the English test came up, and was definitely helpful in the speaking section, too. I ended up having a great score that I don’t think would have been possible if I had not been so into reading.
But those weren’t the only perks of reading. Through books, I got more aware of the world around me and hundreds of topics caught my attention instantly. So much, that last year -after reading loads about culture, life decisions and feminism- I realized that I wanted to go back to study, and it needed to be something related to human beings and how we react and interact with each other. Just a few days ago, I found out that I got accepted at the University of Oslo, in Norway, to study Social Anthropology.
That’s how finally reading dozens of books didn’t just become an annual challenge to prove to myself how capable I was of finishing a certain amount of texts in 365 days. Now it’s also one of the main reasons why I can write in English without feeling insecure, that I wrote a motivation letter that got me accepted into two really good universities, and that I finally found out what I want to do with my life right now and in the near future.
Books can open up your mind, but also doors to new worlds, new opportunities, and new yous. Read more. It will be fun!
Life Lovers Magazine® 