Learning to Love Reading Again During Grad School

It’s a warm day in May 2013. I’m sitting in an office at my university, going on about the year’s worth of history books I’ve read (which sometimes means “skimmed” or “looked at the review”).

This is the Big Exam–the one that will officially move me from PhD student to PhD candidate. There were over a hundred books on a list that I will never look at again, save for a very, very small handful of the ones I liked.

I’m not sure whether I’m saying what I’m supposed to as I regurgitate the knowledge I’ve accumulated through all this “reading.” My heart starts to pound every time an examiner gears up to ask a question. No, no, no. Please don’t ask about that…or that…or that….

It feels a bit like an out-of-body experience.

Except for, say, a tenth of those books, I’m not really into a lot of them. I know that it’s weird for a historian to say they don’t like a history book.

But honestly?

Many on the list are dry, mechanical texts that have probably influenced the robotic method I’m using to discuss them during this exam. We are talking toast-dry. No offense to toast–who doesn’t love toast?–but I don’t love dry writing.

(Confession: It was my fault, as I was the one who put together the reading list in the first place. Oops.)

So I try to stick to those nine or ten books that I enjoyed. And then–YES. One of the examiners asks about my favorite book on my list, my absolute favorite.

(It was Mark Mazower’s Salonica, City of Ghosts, by the way. Check it out!)

And I notice something weird. Suddenly I’m becoming more animated, lighting up, speaking with more confidence. Not only do I know this book well, but I genuinely liked it. A lot.

Why?

Because I actually enjoyed the process of reading it. It was well written and engaging, and it made me excited about studying history, being a historian. And above all, it made me excited about putting together words to create something that readers enjoy.

Reading books that I liked has been a conscious effort since starting graduate school. The number of dense books and poorly written (indecipherable) jargon-laden articles I’ve had to read over the years made me almost militant about it. Just about every weekend I was at the local library, picking out something light and fun to read. Women’s fiction ranging from commercial to upmarket, classic literature, suspense and mystery. I also reread the entire Harry Potter series, and yes, devoured my ongoing collection of Nancy Drew books. I listened to audio books, too, giving me something to look forward to before work in the morning or after class in the evening.

But given the amount I’ve had to read in grad school–in a history program, no less–you may ask: “Why read more stuff?”

Or maybe, if you want to be blunt about it, “What is wrong with you?”

Indeed.

Why do this to myself (and to my poor, pathetic, very nearsighted eyes, which have suffered enough already)?

Why pile on MORE reading, when the majority of my work involves it?

Because–and the answer is simple–I love reading, and I need to remember that. I need to remind myself that I have loved reading my entire life. I can’t let the vast amounts of dull, dense, and/or indecipherable graduate school reading ruin that. And when I’ve come across a book that I enjoy, it’s refreshing.

(VERY IMPORTANT side note to all historians and other scholars: if you can do narrative, imagery, and solid description, bravo. Standing ovation. And if you write clearly, meaning I don’t need ten minutes to decode a sentence in my native language, then thank you, thank you, thank you. Not everyone producing scholarly work can write like that, as I have found out the hard way.)

The problem? I’d pretty much forgotten that whole “I love reading” thing in the year leading up to my exam. Forgot. How to love. To read. To read. When I realized that I loved reading a tiny bit less because of this exam, and because of the huge amount of reading on top of that that I’d had to do over the past three years, I almost cried.

I mean, I’d loved reading since before I could read. I’d pick up books and try to figure out what they said. And once I figured out which letters went together to make which words, I’d write my own stories and books and then read them. I’d reread books that I’d devoured half a dozen times out of the sheer joy of immersing myself in the story, in reading. And to realize that I might love it even a bit less than I always had? It was a horrible feeling.

So back to May 2013.

The day after the exam, after telling myself I’m swearing off all reading for the next week save for street signs and grocery lists, I find myself in Manhattan with a bit more time on my hands than anticipated. I start wandering,  and lo and behold, I end up at a used bookstore.

(The Strand Bookstore, if you were wondering. One of my regular haunts in New York.)

I laugh. Really? But then I think, Hey, I’m going to start reading again sometime–why not now?

I decide to go for something fun, and immediately know which book I want to read. I’d read it a few times before, but didn’t own my own copy. Ten minutes later, feeling lighter somehow, I walk out of the Strand with a copy of Sophie Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic, and plunk down in a café.

It’s perfect.

Reading for the enjoyment, because that is exactly what you feel like doing in that moment, is wonderful. Picking up a specific book because it’s exactly what you feel like reading in that moment is wonderful.

I had struggled with that for the previous year, with those books I skimmed and stumbled through and, yes, even despised. I was reading those books for none of those wonderful reasons why people choose to read books. Even the books I enjoyed were ones I was only reading because I had to. That took a chunk of the fun out of any potential enjoyment I got from reading them.

Maybe the sudden lack of exam stress had something to do with it, but when I picked up the exact book I wanted to read the day after my exam, my love of reading was restored to its full, pre-exam year levels. And more importantly, I felt more like myself again, which is one of the best feelings in the world.

Note: This post originally appeared on Suite.io in October 2015, and has been edited since then. And yes, I still love reading.