[Dara Bethany Quinn O]

I'll try to keep this as short as possible as I don't want to share my life story

Presently I am going into my junior year of high school. My entire life I was a reader and at a high level, until 7-8th grade where I became very uninterested, 9th-10th grade being completely unwilling to finish a book other than a few a year, which of course is no good for my grades considering we have to take tests over them online.



I generally just find them boring, or even if they are good I don't really feel the need to finish them, or pick them up when I should. Because of this my reading level has definitely declined, reading for class has become very difficult for me. The worse thing for me though is that I pick up books and become very angry with the characters, or if the character them self is depressed or angry I begin to mimic it a bit until I'm finished with the book, so then I tend to want to stay away from the book so I won't be grumpy

Also when I do have the inclination to read I know that I don't have the freedom to do so as I please because I will have to read a book in the requirements of my class and pick it from the school library bummer.

Thank you so much for your time

[atsleepwalkingpace]

I 100% know that feel, bro. When I was younger I liked reading, mostly series books (it helped that I grew up with Harry Potter) and although it wasn't my number one hobby, I read a fair bit. As I got into high school I never really read books that I didn't have to (again, other than HP). It was so hard for me to get past the first page. I'd read the first sentence and be like "no, this is shit, I'm done".

About a year and a half after I got out of highschool I got this feeling that my brain was all...mushy. I know. Not knowing a bigger word than 'mushy' was a concern, so I started trying to get into reading again. Lethargic. Today I would have said my brain felt lethargic. See how much I've learned?

Anyway, there are still times when I get angry at characters in books or am reluctant to start a new book because I don't want to emotionally invest in it. Right now I'm putting off reading Room by Emma Donoghue because it's sort of intense. I think if you find some good books (like a series you think you'll like) you'll be more willing to start and finish books. Books are almost always more entertaining than you think they'll be :)


Goodreads.com is pretty much amazing for finding books ideas. Without it I would have given up on reading pretty soon after I started, but now I have sooo many books I want to read I'll NEVER run out :)

[Nicole Hobbs]

I think it's hard to actually give yourself permission to become emotionally invested in a book, because, you know, it's JUST a book, so you shouldn't become emotionally invested in characters/etc that aren't real, etc etc....
But once you give yourself permission to feel those emotions...whichever may come up, as a result of said media (be it book, movie, whatever)...then you are free to experience these things.

Or, that's what it was like for me.

[OldManRivers]

Now I read more books with true to life emotional content - not heavy, uncomfortable, over the top -
But when I was working as a therapist, I read nothing but escapist fiction - some really good stuff like C J Cherryh' or Ursula K. Le Guin, others. I had all the emotional content I needed at work.

[Dara Bethany Quinn O]

:) Thank you all very much for answering, it really helps to know that other people feel the same way, its motivating.

The last book I read was Freaks and Revelations by Davida Hurwin and it reminded me how much I loved reading, but also what a grumpy kid I can be :P

About a year and a half after I got out of highschool I got this feeling that my brain was all...mushy. I know. Not knowing a bigger word than 'mushy' was a concern, so I started trying to get into reading again. Lethargic. Today I would have said my brain felt lethargic. See how much I've learned?

Currently I'm trying to read Scarlet Letter in a month before school starts :( and I'm trying to be optimistic, but as he said I realized my brain is much mushier than it once was ... it's like impossible I know there is sparknotes but.... that takes even more effort

[Eleos]

My earliest reading experiences involved the Harry Potter books on rotation over and over until the final one was released. After reading the last one, I never picked them up again.

Books are a double edged sword for me. Intense emotion in books can be cathartic, but as somebody before me said, they can put me in a dark place for days.

Since I don't get much time to read recreationally, I haven't. But I look forward to when I have my degree and can spend time all the classics.

[Aizar]

I never liked the books I had to read in high school or middle school. I might have liked them if I had found them and read them on my own time, but combine being forced to with all the kinds of silly stuff teachers pulled out of them as "important themes", I could never get into them.

I tend to be skeptical of books that could be applied to various activist movements, too. Schools LOVE to put those things into their curriculum though, which always irritated the hell out of me. You're teaching me to read and have critical thinking skills, not swallow your political beliefs as fact because it was in a tear-jerking book I was forced to read. Urrrrrrgh, can you say emotional appeal?

But as for reading just in and of itself...sure. I become emotionally attached and I don't mind it. But I can also pick which books I want to read. If it's about a character who's just ugh to me, or the author is picking at a theme I really don't agree with, I put it down and find something else.

[Dara Bethany Quinn O]

I never liked the books I had to read in high school or middle school. I might have liked them if I had found them and read them on my own time, but combine being forced to with all the kinds of silly stuff teachers pulled out of them as "important themes", I could never get into them.

I tend to be skeptical of books that could be applied to various activist movements, too. Schools LOVE to put those things into their curriculum though, which always irritated the hell out of me. You're teaching me to read and have critical thinking skills, not swallow your political beliefs as fact because it was in a tear-jerking book I was forced to read. Urrrrrrgh, can you say emotional appeal?

But as for reading just in and of itself...sure. I become emotionally attached and I don't mind it. But I can also pick which books I want to read. If it's about a character who's just ugh to me, or the author is picking at a theme I really don't agree with, I put it down and find something else.

:) Thanks for your thoughtful answer. I was wondering, which books do you specifically feel that way about, if you can remember, that you were forced to read at school? If you aren't comfortable mentioning that it's okay I was just quite curious :)

[Ashneversleeps]

I didn't like anything I had to read for high school. Maybe if the parameters of all the assignments I had weren't so hopelessly inane I would've liked some of the ones we had (relatively) free choice over. I actually didn't read much at all (for pleasure included) in high school. That's of course changed greatly since :).

Listening to the professional dramatic readings of Shakespeare on tape after reading it ourselves was always pretty funny though.

Personally, I sort of stray from really emotionally compelling books, which ever ones those may be. I've loved all of the Dostoevsky I've read, but it just affects me too deeply to read often, for example. I've put off the Brothers for so long because of how mesmerized and emotionally torn I was by Crime and Punishment, heh.

[Aizar]

:) Thanks for your thoughtful answer. I was wondering, which books do you specifically feel that way about, if you can remember, that you were forced to read at school? If you aren't comfortable mentioning that it's okay I was just quite curious :)

I'm drawing a bit of a blank on novels. I didn't like Phantom Tollbooth, the Iliad, or Johnny Tremain, but I don't think those have much in the way of politics to them. They just weren't terribly interesting to me.

There was a book called Fallen Angels I read in high school about a soldier in the Vietnam war.. It was emotion provoking: I don't know what you know about the Vietnam War, but it didn't pussyfoot around the nastier bits of it at all. It might've been the writing or it might've been the fact that my teacher didn't stress all the political messages, but I enjoyed it more than I thought I would.

I can think of the example problems for my statistics class right now, though. It's not really a novel, but all the examples have to do with liberal political ideals, and being a class about surveys and things, every single one of the examples has the liberal ideals shown as favored by the majority. One of them was even about Obama's healthcare law, so it had to been written pretty recently. THAT ticked me off. But again, that's more a math class than what you're talking about, I think.