As a kid, I was a voracious reader of books.
I can recall finishing my school work as quickly as possible so I could read a few pages of whatever novel I was engrossed in at the time before the bell rang. I would then rush home to continue reading until dinner was ready.
If I couldn't fall asleep that night, (a common occurrence) I would read until the early morning, often trying to hide my bedroom light from my parents so they wouldn't know I was still awake at 2 a.m. on a school night.
With a lifestyle like this, it's easy to see how I used to finish 50 or more books a year. I remember in Grade 6, I polished off every book that my teacher had on our classroom book shelf – including the entire MacDonald Hall series by Gordon Korman and much of the Drangonlance chronicles by Margaret Weis.
My love of reading books started to decline in my teenage years. By junior high school, I had gotten more into surfing the internet, playing soccer or video games, and watching TV comedies like South Park and Two and a Half Men. By the time I entered high school, my book-reading habit was pretty much dead.
Once I was in university, I had so many readings to complete for my classes every week that during those years, I hardly read for leisure at all. Plus, thanks to the popularization of Netflix in the early 2010s, I had developed a new-found love of TV dramas like Breaking Bad, Mad Men, and House of Cards to occupy my free time instead.
While I still read a lot as an adult (and as a journalist), novels and books have been replaced by news articles. Even though I possibly read more words per day now than ever before, I struggle to get through five to 10 actual books each year.
When reading a novel, I've noticed it's typical for me to get bored after about 100 pages. My attention span is so much shorter than it used to be that I often get distracted mid-sentence or have to re-read a paragraph.
I've tried a few times as an adult to get back into reading books and novels, but I've never been able to find which genre I like best. I know I've come to like non-fiction a lot more than fiction, which means I usually seek out autobiographies and long-form, investigative journalism whenever I browse a book store, rather than mysteries or thrillers.
Nevertheless, one of my New Year's resolutions for 2022 is to get back into the habit of reading books, and I'm happy to say I've seen some early success. Just a month into the year, I've already finished a book on Alberta's burgeoning craft brewing industry, and Peter Mansbridge's memoirs. Next up is Theo Fleury's autobiography, and a novel by Canadian author Terry Fallis.
