The New York Times ran an article about Nina Sankovitch, who has been reading a book a day for nearly a year. She has been posting her reviews on her blog, readallday.org. It is an interesting endeavor to be disciplined to read that many books. I applaud her for her drive and commitment to read these books, and her commitment to read different authors and new books.
It challenges me to read more, but discourages me as well.
I would love to read a book a week, but I’m not there. I’m a pretty slow reader. Granted, the books she read were light—I don’t necessarily mean easy—but not heavy books with non-fiction, theology, and philosophy that I always seem to read. But, she read books. One of my biggest challenges right now is to find time to read.
The time is now 8:30 pm, the kids have been put to bed and I have a 0500 wake up looming over my head. My Army Physical Training (PT) starts at 0630—and the day won’t stop until this time tomorrow night. So, I must make time in my day to read.
Sometimes that time is not available.
It encourages me that it can be done. Yes, Sankovitch has older children and a comfortable economic situation, but she does have some responsibilities…and she made some sacrifices (ie. Gardening, clothes shopping, and coffee with friends). Some of these sacrifices like the time with my wife after 8:30pm are not an option on most occasions. I also try to keep up with my heavy comic book reading load.
But, I still see the challenge before me to read one book at least every other week—or, one day, every week. I’m a slow reader, but getting better—it all boils down to how much time I have available and how much other events I want to give up.