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On Reading
I used to burn through books. This stopped dead in the last year of school, when I stopped reading for pleasure and instead read for academics. And for my own pleasure, I swapped fiction books for the internet, watching television shows and films. Then after arriving at university in 2007 I began listening to podcasts as well. I found that I only very rarely went back to reading and almost never went back to the books I had on my shelves.
On the other hand I have been trying to write several different novels on and off since 2011, which I have found really rewarding, at least when I’ve been able to dedicate time to it! Perhaps that’s an odd dichotomy — the writer who does not read, and while researching how best to complete my stories, I found that one thing that all novelists said was to read — as much and as widely as possible.
On the realistic, more physical side of things, I moved cities and couldn’t bring the bookcases and boxes of books I had been collecting for years with the faint, childhood notion of building a little library or study for myself. In the end I brought about 15–20 books with me and sold, gave away or donated the rest — you can see some of them in my previous posts! I didn’t count them in the end, but I know it was several hundred. It definitely meant that the journey up with all of my stuff was much easier!
