Last year, I started reading nonfiction books and rediscovered my joy for reading and learning. I say rediscovered because I never really stopped reading, I just lost the curiosity that had drawn me to reading books from a young age to the end of high school.
See, while attending university there was plenty of things that were interesting to learn. There was also a lot of stuff that I was required to read and learn about that was, let’s say, less than compelling.
Honestly, I can only remember a few specific things from a handful of classes, and most of those memories stem from the professor being engaging and passionate about teaching.
If you’re going to school in your early 20s, and you don’t have definitive plans for what you are going to do once you’ve finished, you tend to passively digest the material that you don’t find interesting. Or at least this was the case for me.
For those classes I wasn’t enthralled with, I would avoid the assigned readings as much as possible. Often, it was the case that I could get by only reading the few chapters that were pertinent to the upcoming test or paper.
I developed a strategy that allowed me to supplant the course’s reading schedule outlined by the professor. This strategy involved mostly procrastinating, followed by periods of intense, anxiety-filled work that would, more often than not, yield me surprisingly adequate results. It was a double-edged sword in that I was able to maintain decent grades, but there wasn’t much incentive for me to change my ways.
The unfortunate byproduct of my practice of avoiding textbook material was that I stopped reading for leisure. I had no motivation to read books I would actually enjoy while I was evading what I “should” have been reading.
I filled my time away from school with a carousel of distractions that would take my mind as far away from academics as possible. I worked at a bar on weekends and practiced with the band at least once a week. At the time, these activities were my main priorities. I dreamed of touring with the band, and working at the bar was the way I was going to fund my dream. It was all too easy to forget about books and the magic they contained.
Fast forward to finishing school and I didn’t want to even look at a textbook or academic paper. The forced direction of study had sucked dry my natural curiosity for learning.
Luckily at the same time, I started listening to podcasts, and they supplemented my itch to learn new things in an entertaining format. Seriously, podcasts are the best. But that’s for another post.
It was around the same time that I started getting back into fiction. This journey began with Stephen King’s Under the Dome. A friend had recommended it to me at some point while I was attending university, but the 1200-page count kept me away.
It was liberating to get caught up in a complex narrative without feeling as though my time would be better spent doing something else. Once I finished Under the Dome, I read some of King’s earlier classics like The Shining, Salem’s Lot, and The Stand.
By the time I finished those first few books, I was engrossed in King’s storytelling. I found his books to be a perfect mix of fantasy, mystery, suspense, and horror.
And then I read The Gunslinger. It introduced me to Roland Deschain and the Dark Tower universe. It was loosely a Western, in the ilk of cowboys and robbers, but under the surface, I could tell it was much more.
I had tried to read this book in high school but never made it very far. My second attempt to read it only took me 2 days. It wasn’t long before I got my hands on the second Dark Tower book, The Drawing of Three. From there, I continued reading the series until the end. I think it took me close to a year to get through the 7 books as they got bigger and bigger the farther I went along.
I now view the Dark Tower books as the best fiction series I have read to date. It is an epic tale, unlike anything else I have read, watched, or heard. It was through reading this series that I rediscovered my joy for reading.
If I hadn’t read the Dark Tower series or the other Stephen King books I’ve read since, I don’t know if I’d be as passionate about reading again as I am now. It was getting back into fiction that eventually led me to kindle an interest in nonfiction. After being away from school for a couple of years, I was finally ready to seek knowledge on my own.
At the beginning of 2017, while I was reading King’s IT, I started watching nonfiction book summaries on YouTube trying to figure out what I should read. Eventually, I came across a list of recommended books from a channel called FightMediocrity.
I bought all 9 books he suggested and began my transition from reading only fiction to reading mostly nonfiction. It opened my eyes to a whole new world of interesting people and ideas. The more I read, the more my reading list grew. By the end of 2017, I had read 50 books, and my reading list had grown to more than 70.
Reading has once again become a mainstay of my daily life. In a world with so many forms of entertainment and distraction, it is easy to forget how wonderful it can be to get lost in a book. And when it comes to learning and understanding, the written word is still the most visceral way to convey ideas.
So, if you haven’t opened up a book in a while, I urge you to give it another try. Whether it be to get lost in a world of fiction, or discover something new with nonfiction, I’m sure you will appreciate the experience.
What book or books have had the most impact on you and your relationship with reading?
Originally written & published Feb 7, 2018
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