I’ve been reluctant to admit it, but I’ve been having trouble finishing books. Or, indeed, even starting books. I’d heard of “writer’s block” but is there such a thing as “reader’s block”? It perhaps began even before the pandemic — certainly since then — that I’ve struggled to make myself read whole books. Over the past few months, I’ve checked out perhaps a dozen books from the library and returned them all unfinished — some unopened.

I decided recently that I was going to make myself start reading again. I spent some time thinking about it and realized one problem was that, for various reasons, I didn’t have a place to read anymore. So I set about to create one.

My office had gotten taken over, at one point, as a storage room, and was choked with boxes. Buried in them was an old antique chair, so I extracted the chair and banished enough of the boxes to make a space. Then I went to the store and bought new floor lamp, so I’d have enough light to read by. And I set up a side table to hold my TBR pile and a coffee cup. And then I started to read.

On my last trip to the library, I had checked out Katherine Addison’s The Tomb of Dragons. It was wonderful! I enjoyed reading it a lot. And I finished it. After reading it, however, I realized something else.

I read books differently now that I’ve written books of my own. Rather than becoming purely immersed in the story, I find myself frequently distracted by observations on the craft of the author. Why did they choose to include this detail? Why did they select a conlang term for this item and not that? Why? Why? Why? I think that was part of what was making it hard to read books. Now that I’ve recognized it, I can adapt.

Anyway, I went through the house and collected together my whole TBR pile(s) and, while I have the holiday and intersession before me, I plan to try to make plenty of time to read.