Saturday, December 27, 2008

How I Find Time to Read!

After telling Jeff about my last post, he said "wow, 28 books? That makes you sound like all you do is lie around and read!" So, to qualify that (absolutely ridiculous) assumption, I thought I'd pass on my tips on how to find time to read! Most of my reading gets done before bed - I climb into bed (usually at some ridiculously late hour) and read anywhere from a few chapters to a few pages depending on how tired I am (reading makes me sleepy!). After that, I find the best time to sneak in a few pages is in the bathroom! Take your book with you, do your business and stay put while you read a few pages (usually no one will bug you while you're in the bathroom and you can get a few minutes' peace while you read a bit!). Then, of course, is remembering to take your book with you (which I almost never do!) and read during those tiny "found" times like waiting to pick up a kid, or in a doctor's office waiting room. Jeff swears that if you bring a book for a doctor's wait, you will get seen faster! Murphy's Law or something. By far, the best marathon reading I get done is when I have a long period of time where I am not needed or demanded upon for something - as you can imagine, this is a rare occurrance, but it DOES happen occasionally, like during a camping trip, road trip or in 2006 when I spent two days in the hospital with Hannah while she had her appendix out. Like I said, it's a rare event. I'm not saying you should hospitalize your children just to get your book read, but still, you must find those opportunities. Now, that's not to say that every person....man, woman and child, shouldn't have at least a half-hour of uninterrupted time during each day to read. That, in my opinion, should be a law. In fact, we tried to do this with our family once. We stopped everything we were doing, met in the family room and sat down to read our own individual books (or magazines, or comic books) for a half hour. It was so nice. But as in all things, busy-ness took over and we stopped doing it. Still, it should be a mandate. Everyone should find time to read! Now stop reading my blog and go pick up a good book!

2 comments:

Sydney said...

I totally agree about making some time to read each day. When I first read your other post about the books I was shocked that you read that many books too! With everything you do during the day I can't believe you find the time to read that much! I thought I was reading quite a bit this year, lol. Anyway, good tips on this one!

MAMMA said...

What a bunch of crap! I consider yours and Sydneys blogs some of the best reading I've ever done and I will NOT stop reading them to read something by someone who did something somewhere with someone I don't know or care a whit about! You keep on keeping on with this blog and I will consider each of them a book in itself!!:-)

And while we are on the subject...instead of reading, you should WRITE a couple of pages each night and turn the dang thing into a book - I'll read THAT!!! You are such an amazing writer!
Love, M2