Today’s Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, asks us to list our ten favorite books of 2015 so far. Right at the beginning of April I went into a terrible reading slump that was only broken temporarily by re-reading Keith Lee Morris’s The Dart League King and then reading Sarah Vowell’s Assassination Vacation. The result? I’ve read only 17 books so far this year. I think that’s a record low.
Nominating top ten favorites from such a short list feels weird, so I picked out five:
Seating Arrangements, Maggie Shipstead
Skippy Dies, Paul Murray
The Signature of All Things, Elizabeth Gilbert
Into Thin Air, Jon Krakauer
The Hand That First Held Mine, Maggie O’Farrell
And see, I already feel bad about leaving off The Lola Quartet, Claire DeWitt and the City of the Dead, and both of the Sarah Vowell books I’ve read. But if I had read more, certainly some of those would fall off the list.
Which brings me to this: If I’m being honest, I’d also have to say that I haven’t been a good reader lately, and there’s evidence. For one, my “review” of Skippy Dies, which was all just holycowIloveditbutnotsurewhykthanksbye. Oh gosh if that wouldn’t convince you to read it I don’t know what will! I also have a post about Seating Arrangements that I wrote months ago and kept meaning to put up–but when I looked over it it last week, thinking I might post it, I was sort of happy I never did. It was just a whole lot of yammering about preppies and New England and again ohIlovedititwassogood!
Not that I think I need to write deeply about every book I read, but looking back at older posts and thinking about my current situation, I realized I have fallen into some very general bad habits when it comes to reading. I don’t take notes anymore. I don’t highlight passages or mark pages. And clearly what’s worse is that I am reading mindlessly. I’m enjoying things in the minute without really thinking about why. I suppose this sort of “love the one you’re with” approach to reading is okay once in a while. But that’s not why I got into this whole blogging thing. I got into it to talk about books. Not even to “review” them or assign them arbitrary star ratings. That definitely isn’t why I read. I read because I am interested in writing, and I like to talk about writing, and to talk about how the books I read fit into life, reading or otherwise. So if I can make a half-year resolution, it’s to be a better reader—not necessarily to read more, but more deeply than I have been.
The Evening Reader 
Two of my favourites in that list – Skippy Dies and The Hand That First Held Mine. I know what you mean about reading ‘better’ – sometimes I have to make that conscious effort too.
Cathy, I know those two are both going to be on my year-end list. If I ever get around to it, I’d like to read them both again.
Reading more deeply is a great goal. Sometimes I gobble up books, and then realize a couple of weeks later that I never really stopped to process them… and a lot gets lost that way.
Lisa, I think I fell out of the habit very gradually, until I finally just kept moving on to the next book without stopping to think anymore. Probably why I started having such a hard time finding the energy to write about what I was reading. Thanks for visiting!