Read In...

I have to admit it. I just read much slower than I used to.

Even knocking my original to read number down quite a bit I need to read 12 books by the end of the year to hit that lower number. And I don't read that fast anymore.

I'm hitting just over a book a week instead of a book every 3-3 1/2 days. And that's if they are normal sized, fiction, books. Get a tome or a nonfiction in there and it slows down even more. Or if, and this pains me to say, if it's a book I'm going to finish but will probably be the last one of hers I read because it's...well...it's boring. It's only residual fondness for the characters as they used to be that will hold me to the end of this last book. Then like from so many other authors in the past I will walk away. Which makes for really slow reading. It's a slog is what I'm saying. The goal is to finish it this weekend and be done with her worlds.

But even then unless I find a lot of novellas between now and New Year's Eve I am just not going to hit that number.

It shouldn't bug me. I mean, who cares that I read slower than I used to? Reading fast isn't some sort of goal. Enjoying what you read is the goal. Learning something is the goal. Pretty sprayed edges can be a goal as well. Not mine, but I know for some they are and even this terribly boring book I'm reading right now probably has a beautiful hardcover version out there that would look good on a shelf. But oh holy hell is it boring.

I think it's like the writing goal that I am absolutely not going to hit. I think it's just having to reframe my own perception of self. For a long time it's been, I read and I write. I write rants and rambles and fiction. I read a lot. I like stories. True or made up. I read and I write.

It's how I think of myself.

And now? Well...

Maybe that's still who I am.

Just now it's I read slowly and I write sometimes.

And I finish books that used to be about people I was interested in even if now they've committed the unforgivable sin of becoming unpleasant and boring.

Seriously. Ugh.