When reading becomes a chore

How I loved opening the first page of a book and diving with relentless curiosity into new worlds, discovering characters I would come to know so well that they felt like close friends. Opening a book means entering a world of multiple depths; little by little, I learned to appreciate the style through which a story is woven, and the author behind the complexity of their characters.

Gradually, however, I found myself reading fewer and fewer novels and more and more theoretical works. I even remember a period when I no longer touched literature at all, out of guilt at not being busy exploring theory. Has that ever happened to you? You know, that kind of block in which we tell ourselves our reading time should be devoted to a professional project — which stops us from opening anything but a theoretical work, and thereby leads us to see reading as a chore.

Watching my taste for reading dwindle under the weight of duty, I tried to solve my problem by every means that came to mind: increasing my self-discipline, building daily routines, opening several books at once to renew my interest and attention… But nothing changed the underlying problem: reading was becoming an effort.

The solution was in reading

And then one fine day, the solution presented itself to me. As paradoxical as it may sound, it was in reading that I found the solution to my reading problem! As with many effective solutions — something Milton Erickson knew perfectly well —, it was the wind of a paradoxical act that swept away the clouds darkening the sky of my desire.

At the very moment when it was more than urgent for me to make progress in that book my attention stubbornly refused to settle on, on a whim and as an act of defiance, I threw it into the depths of my bookcase and pulled out another one I had never opened. I chose it as the polar opposite of the first: a novel from a great saga set in a medieval fantasy world, the kind I hadn’t opened since my teenage years. And guess what?

Not only did I not put that book down for hours, but after setting it aside I felt like digging up the one I had thrown away a little earlier — and I read more of it than I had managed in all the preceding weeks…

And that is how reading solved my reading problem!

A few books that marked me

And for you, I will now share, like an intimate confession, some of the works that have marked me most — those charged with a particular emotional imprint, which were discoveries and initiations for me.

• Harry Potter et le prisonnier d’Azkaban (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), J. K. Rowling
• Les Thanatonautes, Bernard Werber
• L’ombre du vent (The Shadow of the Wind), Carlos Ruiz Zafón
• L’alchimiste (The Alchemist), Paulo Coelho
• La vie devant soi, Romain Gary
• Voyage au bout de la nuit, Louis-Ferdinand Céline
• Les misérables, Victor Hugo
• À la recherche du temps perdu, Marcel Proust

What about you — which books have marked your life? For my part, I am keeping one secret — just one, the very book that solved my reading problem —, if only to preserve the pleasure of being able to offer it one day as a surprise… on a highly significant day.

If you are looking for theoretical reading instead, I refer you to my systemic reading tips for the summer, as well as my suggestions from last year for discovering psychology.

I wish you a wonderful summer! The episode that accompanies this post — in French — can be watched below.

Julien