Thoughts: Books. Reading

BOOKS. READING.

In my early teens I remember my first novel was the translated version of ‘Sleepover’ by Jacqueline Wilson, at first I bought it because I’m only interested with the cute cover. But turned out I enjoyed reading and I started to read more and more of Jacqueline Wilson’s. Not long after that, I really wanted to improve my vocabulary, not in Indonesian, but in English. At that time I knew that I should save some of my money to buy an English book. I was hooked with books since then.

But things changed. I lost it, my love for reading. It happened few years back, I stopped reading. I just did. I lost interest with books and reading. It’s not that I stopped buying book because I bought books occasionally. I even bought Murakami’s 1Q84 few days after I finished Murakami’s The Wind Up Bird Chronicle. Just for your information, The Wind Up Bird Chronicle was the last book that I read properly few years back.

But what happened exactly, what happened with me? Why the heck I lost interest on books and reading?

So here’s what happened…

I struggled on reading. Can you imagine? When you’re reading you should you’re supposed to have your own imagination about the characters and plots. Right? I mean, wasn’t that the purpose of books without pictures; to give readers a freedom to create their own ‘world’ of the written words. Well, it didn’t work for me that time. It was a ‘world’ of emptiness for me. I couldn’t concentrate, I forgot the plot easily and I couldn’t imagine everything.

I didn’t quit there. I tried a few more sentences and tried a few more and tried a few more. Still… No luck. It felt like a paragraph long for me is pages and pages of scientific research (meaning: hard to understand). So that was it, I thought my skill of reading was decreasing gradually (Pfft, reading skill? Yeah right). I thought I was stupid that I couldn’t even understand and concentrate on one paragraph! I am appalled of my own self. (Yes, I exaggerated, a little. But it’s kind of true though.)

You know what happened next, I gave up reading. So many books left unread. I neglected all the books I’ve bought. There were times where I really miss reading and most important, I miss enjoying it. Time went by, now that I understand completely I was unable to enjoy something that I love was because I was having a hard time few year back. Not that I’m sick or something. It was just that I wasn’t in my best time and a lot of things going on with my life.

You know what they say about ‘mental breakdown’? Yeah I experienced that too. When I stepped back to my past years, I realized, that moment I lost interest in almost everything that I used to enjoy. Reading was supposed to be a sweet peaceful escape for me, but that time I just couldn’t, it was a burdensome for me.

But that was that. I started to miss books and reading even more, so I told myself that maybe I should read something that wasn’t too demanding, something like articles in magazine maybe. I began to read again, my first book after years of absence was: Pengakuan Algojo 1965 by TEMPO. Now that I’m reading again, it feels like a part of me is healed. If I ever start to lose interest on what I love, I should remind myself that, I don’t have to push myself too hard on something that I should enjoy.