Booking Through Thursday: Bookless

Booking Through Thursday has a new home and a new button --

This week, BTT asks about inspiration.

It happens even to the best readers from time to time… you close the cover on the book you’re reading and discover, to your horror, that there’s nothing else to read. Either there’s nothing in the house, or nothing you’re in the mood for. Just, nothing that “clicks.” What do you do?? How do you get the reading wheels turning again?

After I finished reading Linda Lear's excellent biography Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature a few weeks ago, I already had Judith Levine's Not Buying It in hand, thanks to Elizabeth of "A Mingled Yarn", who wrote a few weeks ago about the book, intriguing me enough to search out a copy -- that was easy enough!  Sometimes, all it takes to inspire me is a trip to the library, especially when I see a favorite author on the New Book shelf -- I came home with Claire Tomalin's book on Thomas Hardy the other day, and am looking forward to starting it this weekend.

Like with knitting, or with most things, really, I don't like to read when I'm not in the mood -- makes it seem like work, that way.  There are usually enough other things to either distract me for a while or keep me busy until the inspiration does come!

Comments

[Kathryn Estelle]

I rarely am faced with "nothing to read." I'm usually overwhelmed with the possibilities!

I'm glad for your feedback on the Potter biography. It was given to me a couple of months ago, but I haven't gotten around to it yet. Also, I noticed the Prose book "On [Your] Bookshelf." I was given this book earlier in the week for my birthday. Decisions, decisions.

It was funny that you mentioned the toad house because this morning, as I was looking out at the birdbath, I thought that it was a shame there was so much wasted space under the flower pot. It occurred to me that perhaps my husband could use his ceramic drill bit to make a hole for...you guessed it—a toad house!

[Literary Feline]

Like Kathryn, my choices usually overwhelm me more than any other reading dilemma. Haha I do agree with you--sometimes you need to do something else. Forcing onself to read takes some of the enjoyment out of it.

[Juno]

Its odd. I used to be a bookworm. If at any point up to about age 30 you'd asked me for a self description "reader" would have topped the list.
But it stopped. Most of the time, I sort of feel vaguely like I have nothing to read, even with my house full of books.
I read. I enjoy reading still. I still get lost in a book, I still can be seduced by the magic of a full bookcase. But I never finish things, I never have that pull to fill my head with words.
I miss it, you know? But I just don't feel it the same way.

[annmarie]

My book buying habits (like my yarn buying habits - stock up when flush with funds since you never know when 'famine' might strike), have left me with a bunch of books just waiting to be read. So when I'm faced with the "nothing to read" dilemma, it's usually due to having just finished a book that's still occupying my head. When this happens, I'll read other things like short nonfiction or magazine articles. I find the same sort of thing happens when I finish certain knitting projects, and I can't decide what to knit next.