Last night I picked up a book and read it for about 45 minutes before going to bed. My wife noticed and said, "that's the first time I've seen you reading anything in bed for a long time." By a long time, I think she means about eighteen months ago. She's right. I used to read for 30-90 minutes every night before going to sleep, but I've fallen out of the habit.
Hmm, I started blogging about 18 months ago. Coincidence?
Urgh. I confess I've been doing the same thing. I haven't been reading like I used to. But -- I have been reading less ever since I started to write more, period. It's gone like this: I used to gorge on fantasy; then I started to write fantasy stories myself, and found after a while that I had lost interest, mostly, in books of that genre (save for those favorites that inspired me and that I owned). Then I fell into a general dislike of most fiction, save for a very few novelists (Dorothy Sayer, etc.) who might strike some as "old fashioned." I've started reading more non-fiction too, at least, more than I used to.
But the reading for hours and hours until it was three am hasn't happened for a while, with one recent exception, the last Harry Potter book.
Posted by: Andrea Harris at 10:52 PMThe trick is to develop acute insomnia, then you have time for everything.
Posted by: Matt at 11:14 PMMatt - been there, done that. No thanks.
Andrea - Of course, I'm still reading, but my inventory of unread bound books is growing unmanageable. And reading blogs is contributing to a short attention span when it comes to reading that is probably not a good thing in the long run.