How has your relationship to reading changed over your lifetime?

[Anonymous No.19365900]

I'm curious about this because I was just reflecting on my own life and was wondering how people become these avid readers.
>read all the time when I was younger, before middle school, loved the library and looked foreword to it, loved comic books
>major drop off in middle school, on and off reading occasionally (one or two a year), still enjoyed library but mainly went for movie rentals
>high school: stopped reading fiction entirely. didn't read at all beyond what I had to in school, stopped going to the library
>college: spent all my time at every library on campus for school/studying, got back into reading via nonfiction, read one or two nonfictions a year no more than 4
>post college to the past two years: can easily binge a nonfiction. on and off nonfiction often 2 one month and next month nothing.
>mid to late 20s (now): started getting back into fiction, just about a book a month. can still binge nonfiction.
Reading is a much more active process now because I have to take the time out and sit down for it knowing I could be doing something else. I want to know if other people had similar paths or just read more and more as they got older.

[Anonymous No.19366240]

>elementary school - read a lot of novels/fantasy
>middle school - was continually interested in reading but library didn't have books I wanted (didn't know about e-reader/pirating) so my interested waned
>high school - started browsing /lit/ junior year and read a lot of the basic
novels shilled/tried getting into philosophy (failed miserably)
>undergrad - read whatever interests me now, usually more contemporary non-fiction works

[Anonymous No.19366451]

>>19365900
An actual interesting question posted to /lit/. Thank-you OP.
>read regularly in childhood half out of boredom and half because I liked the feeling of holding a book. My parents read a lot so I thought it would make me seem more mature.
>was a good student in grade school so always did the readings, but generally only to get the grade
>in high school, my dad took me to a book store and said I could pick a couple books for myself. I picked The Grapes of Wrath and Crime and Punishment, not because I had any idea what they were about but because I had simply heard the titles. Those two books literally changed my life because they were so much better and more engaging than anything I'd read before.
>since the age of 16 when that happened, I have always had a book on the go, taking anywhere from two-six weeks to read each one.
>there are waves and troughs, such as in 2018-19 when I read non-stop 2 books per month, vs. mid-2021 when I deepened my rut and focused more on internet browsing and alcoholism
>when I'm sober, I read at least 90mins per day, but I haven't been sober much lately
>just finished The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich, am casually reading The Nonsense Factory and COVID-19: The Great Reset, and rereading Serotonin and Blood Meridian (the latter two directly to inspire me my novel project.

[Anonymous No.19366623]

10 years old: A friend lent me Martin the Warrior, the first Redwall book. Blew my goddamn mind. I was already a constant reader, but I think I just did it for lack of anything else to do. Martin the Warrior was the first book I ever "connected" with.

10-14: Read all of Redwall and all of the Discworld, some popular classics. In retrospect I read a LOT during this period, but I was still too young to really get anything out of it.

15-19: Reading less but better (Kundera, Murakami, Calvino, Borges, Garcia Marquez - I was really into magical realism as a teenager). Got a reputation for being "well read," though by /lit/ standards I'm nothing of the sort.

19-21: Life gets in the way. Hardly any reading during this period. Also (dating myself) this is when smartphones become a thing.

22-27: Read on the train every morning and evening, and during my lunchbreak. Golden age. Read a lot of really great nonfiction during this period (Richard Rhodes' Making of the Atomic Bomb was a standout).

Now I'm 29, WFH with a two-year-old. Haven't finished a book in six months. Feels bad but I'm just building my list of shit to read once she starts going to school.

[Anonymous No.19366929]

>>19366623
We are the same age, hows parenthood anon?

[Anonymous No.19367264]

>>19366929
Having kids exposes you to the reality of who you are. They are so intense that you can't pretend the way you can with other adults (even your spouse). They draw you out.

So it turns out I'm still the angry boy I always was, it's just easier to hold it together around other adults. Turns out my wife is more fragile and afraid than I ever knew. All our friends thought we'd be great parents because we're so unshakeable and capable, but we're actually not and we won't. You don't get to find that out until after the first one is born.

That said, when we're all sitting on the sofa in tears of laughter at something completely stupid, inexplicable, unshareable, unrepeatable - our many failures don't matter. For someone who's spent his whole life staring at pages and screens, she's radiantly real.

Also she fucking loves picture books. Chip off the old block.

[Anonymous No.19367271]

>>19365900
>mom wouldn't let us watch tv past a certain hour so we had to read instead. read a lot of books in bed. it was the 90s and fell in love with harry potter and lord of the rings and all that shit.
>middle school, started reading manga, read this one jewish sci-fi novel, and the giver of course, we read machiavelli too, read a jim morrison biography, and more harry potter. reading wasn't a big thing for me in middle school
>high school, become an avid reader, always read under my desk during class, nietzsche infinite jest, pynchon, derrida, zizek, some i understood, some it took me years too. took AP and university literature classes in high school
>wanted to study english but my life got fucked up. never went to college. didn't really read from 17-21, was too busy doing drugs.
>21, end up homeless, spend all my time just reading at the public library. since then have read constantly.
>wish i had gone to university and got an english degree after high school. still read a lot. love reading
my stupid shitty retarded life

[Anonymous No.19367273]

>>19367264
very wholesome and based

[Anonymous No.19367719]

>>19365900
>Pretty much read whatever I was handed until middle school. Lots of YA, Harry Potter, hunger games, Percy Jackson, etc
>Pops turned me on to Pratchett in 6th or 7th grade, I turned into a discworld fiend, chewed through a ton of his books, he still remains my favorite author to this day because of how much influence he had on my development
>Also discovered audiobooks pretty early on and have kinda had one going for pretty much my entire life
>Kind slowed down on the reading in high school, got really into vydia instead but generally still listened to stuff. Read a bunch of fantasy but not much else
>Read very little over my gap year, save cannery row which brought me to tears as I finished it, listened to all of the Witcher books in like 3 months
>Read for pleasure in fits and spurts in college, mostly correlated with my workload
>Have been on a pretty good tear in the past year, I've probably averaged 1.5 books a month for pleasure along with a good amount of reading done for my final year of uni.
I also finished a book within 24 hours of starting it recently which I've never done before and I though that was pretty neat

[Anonymous No.19369124]

>>19365900

>From 8 to 19 : no interest into books except for mechanics and music
>Never been into fiction
>19 : read The Devil in the Flesh by Radiguet
>growing up enthusiasm for books & philosophy
>20 : read Bel-Ami by Maupassant
>21 : read Contempt by Moravia
>today : The World as Will and Representation
Reading has changed my mind in order to analyze the world in every aspect of it. It gave me the inconvenient of not being able to express my thoughts in oral, I think now that text is a better way to communicate thoughts with all layers you have in your head rather than in oral. Reading has terminated all of my bias and now I see them in all the people around me, it is kind of frustrating. However I will not stop reading for that, I love it. But the thing I haven't truly understood is that I haven't grew any interest into fiction, I don't understand the enthusiasm for others into fiction, sci-fi and other genres like.

[Anonymous No.19369201]

9-12: Read constantly, I especially loved Redwall and Deltora
13-19: Got sucked into video games and read very little books. Tried reading comics when I was 16-17 but came to the conclusion they're overwhelmingly trash
20-24: Read slightly more but didn't make a habit of it
25-now: Started listening to audiobooks as an alternative to staring at a screen right before bed, eventually bought an e-reader, and now read all the time since it's so convenient to just pirate something that piques my interest

>>19367264
Very snug post

[Anonymous No.19369583]

> 6 - 16 kid's and young adult fiction. I learnt to read quickly and enjoyed it. Harry Potter, Deltora, Eragon etc.
>17 - 21 A lot of Stephen King and fantasy fiction. Mainly Dark tower and ASOIAF. I really enjoy them, I haven't read a whole lot of other books because I just haven't been introduced to them.
>21- 23 Get a girlfriend and stop reading because I'm busy doing couple shit.
>24 - Single again. Dealing with a persistent injury. Read Dune will tripping on painkillers.
>25 - Start browsing /lit/ occasionally and look for book recommendations. Read Blood Meridian on the train to work every day. Realise that there is more to reading than genre fiction.
>25 - 28 Keep reading Dune and it sparks an interest in philosophy, the human condition and meditation. Read Meditations and books on actual meditation. Tried to read some other philosophy but I don't have the base knowledge yet to comprehend it well enough. Also read Storm of steel in this time and enjoyed it for how bizarre and real it was.
>Now - Reading Plato and planning to try Descartes next. I am constantly checking out new books and finding stuff to read. I also plan to read some classic fiction soon to see if I like it. It is a golden age of discovery for me right now.

[Anonymous No.19369598]

>>19367264
This post is very beautiful. Thanks for the insight.

[Anonymous No.19369613]

>Only read occasionally while in elementary and middle school, didn't read most of the assigned text. I didn't have anything against the idea of reading, but I just didn't have the patience for it and rather wanted to play video games.
>Same for most of highschool, I was too occupied with video games and porn to read. Read summaries of assigned texts, though I did enjoy some of the things we read in class.
>I started reading books in the third year of high school after a breakup. Started with Orwell, Kundera, Huxley, McCarthy, Kafka, Nabokov, Kerouac, Hesse, Shelley. Also read some Genre fiction, mostly Asimov and the Game of Thrones series.
>I started reading a lot more once I started university and bought an e-reader. I couldn't afford a lot of books before so I relied on my local library, started reading a lot more after I could just pirate anything I wanted.
>These days I read about 30-40 books a year, not as much as I would want to, but it's an improvement compared to how I started.

[Anonymous No.19369816]

>childhood:
mom read me stories, then i read stories. at first spy kid stuff, then jules verne type stuff
>middleschool:
read one YA a friend recced me, then read fight club and watchmen, both of which i still like
>highschool:
needed to get into reading proper because i absolutely hated everything and because there was a stem/humanities seperation and i opted for humanities which meant most of the class were girls and my best friend at school failed a year so he wasn't in our grade's hallway and at some point i fell in love which meant the hallways were out of the picture so i needed something to kill recess time. i read naked lunch, the doors of perception, lolita, two hemingways, two mccarthies, two pynchons, 3 collections of harlan ellison which was mostly dissapointing, heart of darkness, waiting for godot, some in my native language... nab and burroughs remained favorites. found a guy i like to shill here. didnt read much at home
>rest:
studied lit so read a lot. hard to read sometimes. read almost everything lovecraft wrote at some point. liked sallinger, pkd and hg wells. read 2-3 more books apart from sun also rises that i straight up disliked. hoping to read everything else from writers that i liked and read joyce, beckett, more horror and maybe some poetry before i die

[Anonymous No.19370747]

>>19365900
see this is exactly why i asked. i'm happy that i'm not alone in the experience of a period of less reading from late teens to mid 20s due to life getting in the way. adulthood is so much easier to incorporate /lit/ time.

[Anonymous No.19370974]

>>19365900
>in elementary school id read manga like naruto and one piece and read fiction like the magic treehouse. loved to go to the library w/ parents and read the books for a couple hours
>in middleschool I stopped reading chapter books and mostly just read manga. berserk, jjba, death note, etc.
>in highschool I got back into reading books. started to get into philosophy and read soren, nietzsche, and thoreau. read mishima and john williams religiously. by junior year, I would read during my free time and whatever chance I could during school. spend most of my time at the library reading. realized I liked reading fiction
>in college I got into economics and wanted to understand other economic systems better so I started reading a lot of books that had to do w/ economics. adam smith, marx, etc. i got bored of it and went back to reading fiction. NYRB books rekindled my love for reading. the only NYRB books I owned were john William books but now I started to read more of their catalog.