Breaking the Reading Drought

Back in the pre-blog days, I used to read a couple of hundred books a year. Really. Mostly mysteries, and not always good, lengthy, complicated ones, lots of subpar series in there, don’t get me wrong, but I was really voracious. I got back into mysteries with a vengeance when I finished my master’s degree in comparative literature and was able to view reading as a pleasurable activity, not as work, when I was able to choose my reading materials once again. Over the years, I’ve slowed down, but still have been coming close to the 100 mark.

In recent years, I’ve become involved in other hobbies, such as knitting. Since moving to Washington State, I’ve also been busier at work, putting in more hours outside the typical day, along with being more social at work, often eating lunch with colleagues instead of holing up with a book.

This spring, though, I really hit a dry spell. Between March and mid July, I didn’t finish a book, except for a couple of books I reviewed for Library Journal, and even those didn’t get my full attention until I was pushing against deadline.

Part of the reason was that we got addicted to a bunch of TV shows and were watching them on DVD as fast as Netflix could deliver them. Another reason was that I got addicted to Packrat, a game hosted in Facebook. But it dawned on me recently that another factor contributing to my reading slowdown may be my changed relationship with food.

Reading mysteries was often linked to eating for me, not just reading while I ate meals alone. I can recall sitting down with a bag of Red Vines and a new Janet Evanovich on a summer afternoon, finishing both within a couple hours. And all sorts of chips and crackers went well with books, as did various candies. I think I must have been eating as compulsively as I read, ripping through food as I ripped through series of mysteries of all sub-genres.

In September 2007 I joined Weight Watchers and have lost 72 pounds so far. My eating habits have changed drastically, obviously.

Recently during my “staycation” I was able to relax and read, polishing off the latest Craig Johnson, last year’s Ian Rankin (oh god how can there only be one more Rebus novel but I digress), and the latest Harlan Coben over the course of a few days. However, it dawned on me that I was also polishing off a lot of food. Healthier snacks, to be sure, such as apples and carrots, but I was also consuming a higher volume of WW snack bars and the 100 calorie bags of Doritos, which are on program but are still a bunch of empty carbs.

This is definitely something I will be working on in the future, because I really enjoyed reading again, but I have to figure out how to break the connection between the two activities.