New Year: Shake Up Your Reading Habits!

Do you ever experiment with the way that you read a book? I might try out a new author from time to time, but that's about it. This year I want to do something different.

I can’t remember where I heard it, but someone mentioned that because some of the older books were published serially, it might be fun to read them that way now. For example, Dickens wrote and published Oliver Twist over the course of approximately two years, and readers had to wait for about a month for the next installment of chapters. We live in a culture of instant access and binge watching, so this might be a really hard concept for many of us! However, I imagine that waiting for that next installment from your favorite author would have been very exciting, especially because there were fewer sources of entertainment and stories available to them, unlike today.

So, I’m going to try an experiment this year. Based on the recommendation of that clever person mentioned above, I am going to read Clarissa by Samuel Richardson. It was written in the form of letters, all of which are dated. I will read the first letter on January 10, the second on January 13, etc. until I work my way through the book. The last letter is dated in December, so I have a long way to go! Will I like this process? I have no idea! What happens if I don’t like the book? I’m not sure yet; I may continue or I may quit. The point is to shake the cobwebs loose from my normal reading habits and see what happens from there.

What can you do to change up your reading habits? You could follow the serialized scheme that I suggested, or perhaps you could focus on just one author for the entire year to get a fuller flavor for his/her work, or maybe you could read from a genre you’re not as familiar with. There are a lot of options available to bring some freshness into your reading life.

Happy Reading and Happy New Year!