I Stopped Reading In School Itus and how to cure yourself.

“Oh yeah, I’ve barely read anything since school.”

Show of hands, have you ever said this? If not you, it’s someone you know. They either haven’t had regular time to read since - well - reading time, or else the last thing they read was the set book for the GCSE exam which put them off libraries for life.

As a recovered school-stopper myself, it took time for me to get back into reading. To Kill A Mockingbird really ruined it for me. Why? Certainly not because To Kill A Mockingbird isn’t an amazing book - of course it is - but because I had to read it. At age 14 I was handed a battered old copy to read over the summer holidays, when I would have much preferred The Hunger Games. Every time I picked up something I actually wanted to read, I felt guilty. I’d put that down and pick up TKAM, and slog through the two-hundred and eighty-one pages. Reading became something I dreaded. Once a teenager has to read something, it is no longer fun - it’s homework.

There’s also the fact that we are asking teenagers to read books that weren’t written for them. If I picked up TKAM today, I’d probably enjoy it a lot more, given that it’s been ten years since I last read it and I’m now at an age where I can actually appreciate it. Bookshops are split into target audiences for a reason, yet teenagers are being force-fed literature that’s just wrong for them. No shade at Jane Austen and the Brontës, but I think we can all agree they weren’t written with kids in the twenty-first century in mind.

Then spending the best part of a year memorising quotations, pulling apart imagery, and writing practice essay after practice essay is really the way to fall out of love with a book. It’s like a relationship that’s gone sour; you know this person a little too well, you’ve seen them on the toilet, the spark just isn’t there anymore. And so millions of students walk out of that exam hall praying they never have to read another book ever again.

Of course, many of them will. It’s just more often than not going to be an A-Level textbook, or in the university library. Uni is hardly a good time for reading anything except Foucault or Marx or other really old, really inaccessible books. In fact, I found my uni reading so difficult that I had to listen to it using text-to-speech software while following the lines with my eyes just to take any of it in.

I only managed to cure myself of I-stopped-reading-in-school-itus when I started working full-time. Taking a bus for half an hour every day leaves you with nothing better to do than read. And I mean, you could read the paper, or the trades, but they’re just not as good as a book, are they?

This is why so many people have a massive Young Adult to New Adult gap in their bookshelves. Why the smallest section in most public libraries is the YA shelves. People are missing out, and this needs to be fixed.

But never fear! I have prescribed the cure below...

 Make time to read.

This is what commutes were invented for. If you’re in the car, it’s time to get an Audible subscription. If you take the bus or the tube, paperbacks are your friend. If COVID has robbed you of your daily commute, I recommend reading for half an hour before you start your day - although if you’re at the stage of lockdown where your alarm doesn’t go off till 8:45, maybe try before bed, or on your lunchbreak. Also if some scientists could get started on handsfree books so you can eat and read at the same time, that would be much appreciated. 

If you really need to imprison yourself, try the bathtub. This isn’t great if you’re really passionate about keeping your books dry, but if you’re locked in the bathroom with no phone and no TV, you’ve got no distractions. (Scientists, please also get started on waterproof books.)

Go back to something accessible - and really, really engaging.

Do you like something white-knuckled and adventurous? Then trust me, you’re not too old for The Hunger Games. Want an easy (and sexy) romance? Try The Hating Game. If the last book you can remember loving is Percy Jackson, it’s time to pick up Percy Jackson. If you’re really stuck, read a grisly murder novel, everyone loves one of those. Whatever is going to get you to switch off, lean back, and while an hour away. I suggest asking your friends for recommendations, and soon you’ll figure out which of them has the same taste as you - then you can just copy their reading list. 

Ignore what you think you “should” be reading. 

Ignore the peer pressure of picking up a classic. It’s not a competition. Who cares if Gary from accounting always sounds so smart at Friday drinks, namedropping philosophers and waxing lyrical about Dostoyevsky? Life is short, read something funny like The Thursday Murder Club.

It’s not a race.

“I’m such a slow reader,” doesn’t mean you can’t read. And I think you’ll find now you’re older, it’s actually easier to sit in a chair and concentrate - next thing you know it’s been an hour and you’ve finished 50 pages. Just give it a chance, and if it takes time, it takes time. What was that quote about journeys and destinations? Smell the roses, and by that I mean the oaky aroma of a new book.

Don’t analyse.

Believe me, you’ve got the skill. You did the GCSE, you wrote the essays, this is second nature to you now. You’ll get the metaphors, you’ll follow the arcs, and if the quotations mean enough to you you’ll remember them without trying. 

And if it’s some old classic that you really didn’t get, you can just watch a YouTube video explaining it afterwards like I did with The Outsider so you can sound smart when you talk about it.

This doctor-recommended treatment shows there is hope after school. And once you’re whizzing through one book a week, it might be time to join a book club...