Do you still read?

I have lots of books. Mostly about art, photography, geology and linguistics as well as specific histories of things I am fascinated with, namely ancient Egypt and my ancestors, the Vikings. I also have collected several biographies, mostly of artists I admire.

I used to love diving into a book on a subject I find interesting and I read constantly for years.

Now, not so much. I WANT to read. It’s one of my joys in life, but with the advent of the internet and the fact that a very large portion of my job for many years consisted of proofreading for up to fourteen hours a day for two or three months straight, has kind of put me off my reading feed. I have a pile of books sitting next to my bed because I think I want to read about one thing, then the next day I jump to something else, and so they pile up half read and abandoned.

The only books I have read through from beginning to end in the last couple of years have been murder mysteries by my two or three favorite authors when they come out in paperback, but those only last five hours or so.

Have I become lazy? Why can’t I get back to my books? My work life right now still requires some proofreading, but not nearly as much as it did previously.

I think part of my problem is I have tuned to the internet, and oddly, my phone for entertainment the last few years. I play a couple of word games on my phone almost obsessively instead of reading words in books. I lurk on internet forums and read comments that sometimes inspire me and sometimes enrage me, but usually don’t enrich my life or teach me anything.

I’m reminded of a phrase someone used once, and I can’t remember the source or what the main subject was, but the phrase was “the dumbing down of America”. I read an article a couple of years ago about how college entrance essay exams have become alarmingly bad as far a spelling and grammar are concerned, and that’s easy to understand when you consider the fact that most people under 30 in this country communicate mostly by texting or tweeting using texting shorthand (which I really hate, except for maybe “LOL”), and they can’t construct an entire cohesive paragraph because they are usually restricted to 140 characters at a time.

I may pick up a book this weekend - perhaps that two-volume biography of Matisse, volume one of which I’ve been mostly through for the last couple of years.

Do you still read?