Reading with Mandy

This week is going to be a short post because I’m in a reading dry spell. These occasionally happen for a variety of reasons. The current one is the result of winter doldrums taking root. I was looking at furniture and contemplating purchasing a new reading chair. Having a place to fold into comfortably to read can make a difference. Some people have rituals for when and how they read. I’ve always liked to mix it up at times, so I’m not stuck reading in only one context. I do follow conventional advice and avoid reading in bed before sleeping. I do not want my body to ever make the connection that reading means bedtime. There are lots of people who read before bed, but I am not one of them. I usually end up staying awake not able to put down what I’m reading. Sometimes changing where you read or when you read will help jolt you out of a reading slump or dry spell. I also like to take this time to use my bookshelves as a bookstore and see if there is a particular book that jumps out at me to get me going. Sometimes dry spells happen because the book I just finished was emotionally charged, and my brain needs time to process what I just read. These are usually good dry spells because they are the result of reading an amazing book that wrecked you. Unfortunately this dry spell is more what I call a I can’t seem to focus on anything right now kind of dry spell. This means a lot of picking up a book and reading a few pages and putting it back down again. This is also often when going on social media and finding inspiration can sometimes help act as a distraction. I prefer to be actually reading, but I also don’t like beating myself up for not being able to right now. Who knows and my dry spell might potentially lift tomorrow or later tonight. You never know. For now I’ll look at a new reading chair and maybe reorganize my bookshelves…or might just stick with the new reading chair. This is also a good time for audiobooks which I just ran out of my 15 hours on Spotify and will look to start a previously purchased book for now which seems to be the next book in the Iron Druid series by Kevin Hearne which I think is hilarious and a fun adventure story. So I will listen until reading happens again. So Happy Listening too!