Cairns, Queensland

In the last few months, I have started reading fiction again, and I’m enjoying it.

I have read all my life. I read academic literature when I was at university, both as an undergraduate, in the late 70s and then more recently as a postgrad student. In completing my PhD, I must have read thousands of journal articles.  At work, it was professional reading. Oh, the joy of reading an Accounting Standard or recent tax case!

In my leisure, I have also read, but until recently, it has mainly been non-fiction and, as a result, often hard to read. I also read the papers and between my favourite person and I, we have a number of subscriptions to online sites. A couple of these are The Free Press, which I have referred to in earlier posts. Although The Free Press is mainly focused on current affairs, it also offers regular pieces on literature and music, as does another of our subscriptions, Quillette. 

As part of a rethink on ‘What’s Next’, I decided to change direction with my reading. I decided reading for pleasure might be a good way to spend some time and decided to move away from non-fiction. The rethink was also a function of my decision to unburden myself from the constant negative and destructive forces that seem at play in our world. It had become so easy to ‘doomscroll’ and I decided that I no longer wanted to succumb to it. I haven’t been wholly successful in this endeavour, but I’m well progressed.

My decision to read more fiction has been easy. Decisions as to what to read have been made easier by favourite person who is an avid reader. At home, we have bookshelves double-stacked, and we have made a particular point of adding more bookshelves in our beach house renovation to accommodate her books. Her Kindle book library is enormous.

The library at our beach house

However, my move to read more fiction was firstly to read a physical book and actually turn the pages. That book was one we found in a second-hand bookshop in Hobart. Sitting on the counter was a 1960s copy of CS Lewis’s, Screwtape Letters’. My favourite person noticed it, and said it was an old favourite of hers. It was an easy read. From there, I went to the Kindle App and read That Hideous Strength’, also by C.S. Lewis, and then to Connie Willis’s Doomsday Book and beyond. All were on the recommendation of my favourite person. I’ve enjoyed them all. I’ve read more books in the last 6 months than in the last 6 years!

I now find myself regularly opening up the Kindle App, rather than diving into a newsfeed or online subscription. 

However, a struggle I’m having is to determine when reading for pleasure is acceptable? I get reading at night before going to sleep, but I’m wondering if reading a book for pleasure in the middle of the day is OK?  I have the time to read, but should I? 

I’m wondering, Is it ok to sit and read at 3 in the afternoon?