READ BETWEEN THE LINES
When the conveniences of modern technology got in the way of good old fashioned reading, Lucy Slight discovered that reigniting her literary flame wasn’t as hard as it seemed
Rediscover your love for literature
I’ve never been one for New Year’s resolutions; to be honest I’m just not an goal setter. But earlier this year I realised something – I couldn’t remember the last time I’d finished a book. Where reading used to be the thing I did every night before I went to bed to make me fall asleep, my iPhone (well, Instagram) had taken over. Mindless scrolling ’til my eyeballs hurt had been putting me to sleep for the past two years and I had completely forgotten what it was like to dog-ear a page halfway through a sentence when I couldn’t keep my eyes open for one more second.
The realisation that I was lacking in the literary department made me feel sad. When was the last time I got so lost in a book that three hours had passed without a thought of anything else? One of my greatest book-based achievements is the time I read the novel One Day by David Nicholls in one day! I wanted to feel that sense of satisfaction and complete escapism again, so I decided to get back into books.
My passion was awakened around the same time I started listening to The High Low, a podcast by British journalists Dolly Alderton and Pandora Sykes, who every episode reel off about five different books they’ve read between them over the past week. One week! How is that even possible? Take a book with you, everywhere, they said.
Reading helps to foster empathy and social skills, all while doing something that may seem to be totally antisocial.
Read your book instead of your phone, they said.
Switch your phone to flight mode and commit to reading uninterrupted, they said. So I did. And now it’s
November and I’ve read a grand total of 11, soon to be
12, books – all of which I’ve proudly logged on my shining new Goodreads account. How’s THAT for kicking goals?
As a writer, reigniting my hunger for reading has undoubtedly had a positive impact on my work, not only for increasing my vocabulary but for enabling me to expand my imagination into worlds other than my own.
“Prose fiction is something you build up from 26 letters and a handful of punctuation marks, and you, and you alone, using your imagination, create a world and people it and look through other eyes,” said author Neil Gaiman, giving The Reading Agency annual lecture in London on the future of reading and libraries back in 2013.
“You get to feel things, visit places and worlds you would never otherwise know. You learn that everyone else out there is a me, as well. You’re being someone else, and when you return to your own world, you’re going to be slightly changed.” In his speech, Gaiman explains that using our imaginations and providing for others to use theirs through access to libraries is an obligation that must be upheld. He says reading for pleasure is one of the most important things we can do for ourselves, and encourage in our children.
A 2014 study by Carnegie Mellon University discovered that reading a chapter of Harry
Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone involved the same brain regions you would use in a real-life experience such as watching someone move in the real world. How cool is that? Reading helps to foster empathy and social skills, all while doing something that may seem to be totally antisocial. It’s the interaction with others over books through the act of discussion and recommendation that helps to develop social and oral skills, while cementing reading as a source of pleasure.
Not only is reading a vehicle through which to temporarily delve into the lives of others, it’s one that can have a profound impact on the way we approach our own. A University of Sussex Mindlab International Study found that tension eased and heart rates slowed down in subjects who read silently to themselves for as little as six minutes. It also reported reading to be 300 percent better at reducing stress than going for a walk and 700 percent more effective than playing video games.
Could my rediscovered love of reading be behind the fact that I didn’t totally lose my sh*t when my computer crashed halfway through writing this article and I hadn’t yet hit save on the Word document? I like to think so. While 11, soon to be 12, books might not seem a lot to some, it’s a dramatic improvement from the past two years when I have neglected this interest. Now that I’m on a roll, I might even double the book count in 2019. Perhaps I should make that my New Year’s resolution.