How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly feature/meme now hosted by That Artsy Reader Girl. The meme was originally the brainchild of The Broke and the Bookish. This week’s topic is How My Reading Habits Have Changed Over Time.

(1) I read more new-to-me books than I used to. Before I became a book blogger, the majority of my reading time was spent rereading old favorites—because I loved them, and because I already owned them. I still reread old favorites; that’s somewhere between a third and half of my reading time. But it used to be more like two-third to three-quarters of my reading. Except for Christmas and birthday presents, getting access to books I hadn’t read before meant buying them, and/or driving 25 miles each way to the library or nearest bookstore… and I didn’t always have the time or money. Now, I can request ARCs (free books!); I go to town more often so I can use the library more; and I have more money to buy books. Plus, I keep my eye on Kindle sales for the books I want to read.

(2) At least 90% of my reading is ebooks. I first tried an e-reader in 2010, when we were planning a 3-week road trip up to Canada. At that point, I was going through about a book every day or two, and I didn’t think I could bring enough books along to keep me happy. I bought a Sony e-reader and loaded it up with free public-domain books from Gutenberg, include a lot of L. M. Montgomery (since one of our destinations was Prince Edward Island.) It didn’t have the same feel as a print book, but it was definitely convenient!

Fast forward to 2013. By that time, I was requesting e-ARCs and reading them on my e-reader, and had bought some ebooks on sale from Kobo. But the new Kindle Paperwhite was definitely a step up from the Sony at that point, so I requested (and got) one for Christmas. Since then, my eyesight has deteriorated (due to age, not reading ebooks!) and I find many mass-market paperbacks strain my eyes; the scaleable fonts of an e-reader are a godsend. At the same time, our income began increasing enough that I could buy books on sale without watching every penny. Fast forward again to today, and I have (gulp) over 3,500 books in my Kindle—some duplicates of books I own(ed) in print, some favorites I never owned, a fair few books I read for the first time in ebook format, and a whole lot I haven’t gotten around to reading yet.

(3) I read multiple books at a time. I used to be a serially monogamous reader, but now I have multiple books going at once. And not just an ebook and an audiobook. Currently, I am actively reading a historical mystery I bought this month, rereading a Robin McKinley book I haven’t read in over 10 years, working my way through two ARCs (both are fantasy short-story collections), and listening to a nonfiction audiobook about medieval Iceland, Vikings, and the Lewis chessmen.

(4) I listen to audiobooks. Please don’t hate me, but when audiobooks first became popular, I didn’t think of them as reading. I enjoyed a good audiobook performance of something I had already read, but most of my exposure was through Robin’s audiobooks: Harry Potter, The Westing Game (admittedly, I hadn’t ever read that one before), the Percy Jackson books, and so on. As a child, I had owned a vinyl record of Meredith Burgess reading the first chapter of Winnie the Pooh, and I loved it. Now we were discovering the narrative voices of Jim Dale and Simon Vance, as well as Full Cast Audio’s brilliant productions of Tamora Pierce’s novels. So I was comfortable with the idea of audiobooks as storytelling for children, but I wasn’t seeking out audiobooks for my own, adult reading…and I didn’t think of listening as reading.

But my attitude and interest evolved over time. Because of Robin’s visual processing issues, I recognized the value of audiobooks as reading. And as Robin grew up, they listened to more and more YA and adult books. They talked me into listening to Patrick Rothfuss’s The Name of the Wind and The Wise Man’s Fear as I drove them to community college courses, music lessons, and dance practice. That was my first experience of listening to adult fiction that I had never read before. I’m lucky it was specifically those two books, because they are both brilliantly written and superbly narrated, and they changed my mind about experiencing a book for the first time through the audio format. Now, I enjoy listening to both fiction and nonfiction books, both rereads and first-time reads. I still read print (digital or physical) more than I listen to books, but I usually have at least one audiobook in progress. I listen on long drives, when I’m walking (mostly on the treadmill; outdoors I prefer to listen to nature); when I’m doing housework, and when I’m knitting or spinning.

(5) My reading interests have broadened…sort of. 15 years ago, I mostly read fantasy, mystery (including historical and cozy mysteries), historical romances, with occasional forays into historical fiction and nonfiction. And I read for every age, from picture books through adult. Now… well, I still focus mainly on those genres, and I still read books for all ages. But there are a lot more subgenres and cross-genre books now than there used to be, and I enjoy quite a few of them. I have branched out into urban and contemporary fantasy, cozy fantasy, historical fantasy, paranormal romance, romantic suspense (besides Mary Stewart, a favorite since my teens), contemporary romance, paranormal or fantasy mysteries… you get the idea. And while I still don’t read a lot of general or literary fiction (especially if it doesn’t end happily), I do read more nonfiction and more historical fiction than I did 10 or 15 years ago.

(6) I keep track of my reading. I never used to keep track of which books I read… until I discovered Goodreads around 2012. Now, I track not only the titles but the actual editions. I also keep a set of yearly spreadsheets that show what I read, where I got the book, what genre(s) it is, whether the author or characters are diverse, what reading challenges it satisifies, whether I wrote a review, and where I posted the review (or the review link, in the case of social media.) I’m also trying, without as much success, to keep a reading journal where I jot down thoughts and reactions as I read, and notes for a review.

(7) I read more slowly than I used to. Sadly, this is a bug, not a feature. The same eye issues that make it harder for me to read small print have also switched my dominant eye for reading. See, when I was little and learning to read, one of my eyes completely dominated for distance, and the other dominated for close vision. Both eyes worked, but my brain selectively suppressed the one that didn’t see as well at a distance or close up, depending on what I was doing.* Now that my vision is slowly getting worse due to age, and glasses aren’t helping sharpen it as much (because of astigmatism as well as less elasticity in the lens), the former “close-up” eye doesn’t see as well at any distance, close or far. So the former “long-distance” eye is now also dominating for reading… but that side of my brain doesn’t interpret what it sees quite as quickly. I still read fluently and quickly, but I’ve gone from being a super-fast reader to merely being a fast reader, and the extra minutes and hours add up over time.

*It’s called monocular vision; it’s what lots of Lasik surgeries try to create, and it is, according to the vision therapists I have worked with, absolutely terrible for you. It takes a lot more energy and mental focus, and it wears you out. And it means you don’t have 3D vision or true depth perception; everything looks flat. No wonder that as a kid, I sucked at all sports involving balls; I couldn’t track where they were! When I finally learned to use both eyes simultaneously at the age of 16, after more than 6 months of intensive therapy, I was absolutely astounded by the difference in what I could see.

So, how have your reading habits changed over time?

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