Reading Books: Lost Magic

As I grew older, I found it harder to read, not just because of the amount of time that it took, but also because of how hard it became to really engage with what I was reading.

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When I was younger, I really enjoyed reading a good book. Well, I say a “good book” but honestly what I wanted was a challenging one. And not just one that was hard to read, but one that I thought was thick and interesting. I was given fantasy stories about distant lands where nothing was exactly the same as ours, scoured the school libraries for books that were meant for higher grade levels, and read some books just to say that I had, never really understanding what it was about or what happened in it. 

As I grew older, I found it harder to read, not just because of the amount of time that it took, but also because of how hard it became to really engage with what I was reading. It became harder to picture these places in my head, the characters were less vivid, their plights less important. Over time, it felt like I had begun to outgrow reading. We read all the time, you see, unable to avoid it in our day to day lives. But I had moved on from reading for pleasure and had started to only read to learn. 

In college and beyond, textbooks became my only reading, still choosing printed copies since I never really found digital books to be as captivating. It felt like digital reading was only meant for short passages, quick summaries, and opinions. The real knowledge was in the paper. After a while, reading was a chore. There was no imagination, just memorization. Parts of the brain I would never need to know, systems of neuron operation, the chemical process of dreams. I knew, and still know, all these things, but will never use them in a practical way. I used to dread readings during this time, only skimming the important sections that I figured the professor would use to question a student at random. In this way, I succeeded in avoiding reading, a task that I used to love and look forward to every day. In law school, it became even worse. The assignments became astronomically long, reading the opinions of judges long passed, some as long ago as the 1800’s, though still just as binding.

In my legal reading, however, I had the realization that there was usually a part that would grab my attention and not let go: the facts. In a legal opinion, the facts of the case are usually restated in a narrative format, explaining to the reader the events that got the case before the court, followed by a legal analysis of the court’s decision. Even the most dry judges couldn’t make the facts any less interesting. This made me realize that perhaps what really caused my lost desire to read was the lack of a narrative story to drive my interest. Since then, I’ve tried to slowly start to introduce books back into my life, beginning with the painful process of getting used to audiobooks, which took hours to accomplish. I’m glad I took the time though, because it makes reading much easier. Now I can enjoy a story while still doing all of the other things that made me too busy to read in the first place. 

Some people may say that listening to an audiobook is not reading at all, but I would have to wholeheartedly disagree, as I find reading to be more than the actual act of seeing words and translating them into a story. The spirit of reading is in experiencing someone else’s tale in your own mind, putting aside reality for a while and transporting oneself wherever the author chooses to take us. And it is not mutually exclusive, reading and listening to a story. When there is time, one can always pick up the pages of a novel and try to recapture the magic that has driven so many children to fall in love with reading. I hope I am able to find it again myself, as I am trying very hard, but sometimes magic never really comes back and all we can do is remember and cherish what we once had.