My Reading Problem

I can’t figure out what’s happened to me.  I used to read all the time.  I’ve always been known as a voracious reader of just about any book I can get my hands on.  As far back as I can remember, books have been my constant companion.  But now, I can’t bring myself to even start a book.

It sounds like a silly complaint and talk about a "first world" problem!  But it has been really bothering me.

I just finished my first year as a full-time college student.  In the beginning, I had to constantly stop myself from reading non-school related books to concentrate on the looming pile of textbooks.  One reason behind my decision to return to college is that I often read textbooks “for fun” so I thought “Why not get college credit for it?”  But now that I was assigned the books and had to read them, they weren’t so appealing.  It's human nature, I guess.

I did manage to squeeze in a few “outside” books during the year.  I flew through the Hunger Games trilogy.  In spite of the dark subject matter, it seemed upbeat when compared to my Anatomy & Physiology or US History readings.  I also picked up a novel by an author who has an “investigative” show on the History Channel.  It was one of the very few times that I just quit reading when I was about three-quarters of the way through.  I found that I just didn’t care about what happened at the end of the book and my textbooks were suddenly more interesting.  That’s definitely an anomaly.

So now I’m on summer break and I have no more textbooks taunting me, although I still have this residual nagging feeling that I should be working on homework.  But there is no homework pending and I am free to read anything I please.

But I don’t.  The idea almost seems foreign to me now.  I forget that I can read something for pleasure.  I went to the library and picked out a few interesting titles.  My sister loaned me a couple of books that I’ve wanted to read.  Normally I would be inhaling them by now.  But they sit here, night after night, unopened.  Why is that?

At first I was attributing it to “homework hangover.”  I was so burned out from a particularly difficult quarter that I needed a break.  But I feel like I should be over that now.

Maybe I need to get back into the habit of reading for pleasure.  I’ll make some time and I am pretty sure that once I get engrossed in a good book (and I have a few good ones patiently waiting) my reading “problem” will be resolved.  It’s pretty funny to me that I need to make myself read!

I just need to hurry it up.  Summer will fly by and if I don’t get in at least a few good books, school will be starting up and pleasure reading will go by the wayside once again.

Do you have any good books you would recommend?  Any summer reading lists you would like to share?  Thanks!