Why I’m Reading More Books

In a world where we have access to so much entertainment, I find myself reading more and more these days. Ever since covid started, I was cooped at home with not much to do outside of work. When I wasn’t always writing or gaming, I began to reintroduce things I didn’t do regularly in my spare time.

Reading books was often just a casual thing for me, I would climb into bed with a book and read a chapter or two before lights out.

The only time I would read more than that was if I was on vacation at a beach or something and I would read for hours!

Now, I’m reading even more than usual both physical books and on my e-reader too. On the night shift, I will take my Kobo with me and read several chapters during the quieter hours past midnight. My physical books I keep at home to read when I feel like it. I have noticed that the more I read, my attention span has increased again significantly.

I think another big factor that has made me flock to books is that the selection from the TV industry is just becoming too overwhelming for me. There are tons of streaming services that can easily put a big hole in your bank account if you don’t keep track of them and it’s easy to binge-watch them. I’m not really into bingeing these things and even if I do enjoy a good series every now and then, I sometimes like to let my imagination do the work for a change.

I also don’t like paying for countless subscriptions as you already know, so yeah, books it is. My Kobo does offer a Kobo+ membership that works like streaming but I would rather have my own collection of books on it that I love rather than pay a monthly fee to have access to millions.

When I read a book, I can picture the characters from scratch based on the author’s descriptions. A TV series basically feeds you their version of the character that stays in your head. Even if I do read a book after watching the series, my mind is desperately trying to visualize my own versions of the characters.

For instance, the Bridgerton series caught my eye and I would like to read the books first, I didn’t like how the first two novels had their covers changed to match what the characters look like in the Netflix series. I love using my imagination when I read a book and when some of it gets taken away from me, it’s upsetting. For example, what if a duke in the books wasn’t originally black? Or what if some other lady in the book had green eyes instead of blue?

I get it, adaptations are designed to tell a story in a different way, even by changing some aspects of the plot and characters. But there’s still something special about reading the book and the more I read, the more I realize that. There are even some series and standalone stories I got into where their TV and film adaptations were superior like the 2005 version of War of the Worlds was way better than the book that I read many years ago.

Still, I will always enjoy books the most because of the freedom they give me to imagine what happens and how in each chapter. It may not give me instant gratification like a TV series does, but the older I get, the more I realize that I don’t need that instant gratification.

Have you been reading more books lately? I am currently reading The Wise Man’s Fear.

👽Emily