Interrupted Reading

Faced with tragedy, people look to what always gave them solace and sanctuary. That means keeping busy, keeping to a routine. For many, this means reading. People online are live tweeting their way through tomes by Tolstoy and Melville. Everyone is seemingly finding solace in the age-old act of reading. But not me. Not right now. I can’t even manage to read more than a few pages. As someone so ensconced in books professionally, I find it troubling… absolutely humiliating. It got me thinking: what if I’m not the only one? A question came to mind, and I decided to ask other writers:

Can you remember a time you were disillusioned with reading? What caused it and what pulled you back? 

The response, you could say, was every bit as illuminating as it was empowering.

—Michael Seidlinger

REBECCA MAKKAI: I graduated college with my BA in literature and thought I had to keep reading in the same way. Meaning, I had to keep reading “Serious Canonical Books,” filling my gaps, etc., but without class discussions, without papers due. I read for fun as a kid, but from high school to age 25 or so I think I read one slightly less “literary” book—The Eight, by Katherine Neville, which actually turns out to be kind of a masterpiece. Probably not a healthy balanced diet. And, of course, a lot of what I thought I was supposed to read was older stuff. The low point was when I stopped reading Emma about a hundred pages from the end. Who stops reading Jane Austen right before the best parts? But I was still reading like a zombie student, not like a reader. I eventually joined a book club that read more contemporary things, some of them great, some of the schlocky. That shook me out of it pretty well.

COURTNEY MAUM: The act of reading has never disappointed me or let me down: ever since I could read, books have provided both a haven and escape. It’s just that sometimes, you pick the wrong destination. Or the wrong traveling companion, let’s say. After all, reading is an act of intimacy: the original one on one. Someone else’s voice whispering into your mind, filling your imagination with images, your heart with surprise or delight. When you have the right book, you have not only a companion but a seductress at your side. When you pick the wrong book, you have a nuisance, a chatterbox, the wrong friend for the ride.

Although there has never been a time when I wasn’t reading something, there have been lots of times when I was reading the wrong book....