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I don't think I can count on both hands the number of articles I've read that state the internet will be the death of books. A new one pops up every couple of months. Personally, I think it's all hogwash. The internet, and blogs in particular, have expanded the types and number of books I read. Blogs have pushed me into reading books that I would have been wary about otherwise, introduced me to wonderful new authors, and my bookshelves are groaning with the weight of books that made their way home with me thanks to a blogger recommendation. The internet is killing books? I refuse to believe it.
But I can't deny that there are days when I feel like I'm in a tug-of-war between the internet and reading time. I write on three blogs, read more blogs than I want to admit, am on twitter most of the day, try to check in to Facebook a couple of times a week, look in at LinkedIn at least once a week - yep, I'm online and on social networking sites a lot. Bookmeo recently asked if social networking sites are to blame for people having no time for books. The comments were really interesting.
Commenter Morgan Mandel says, "Social networks are addictive, but also necessary. Since so many readers and authors are on them, you can’t ignore them. If you do, you won’t be up-to-speed." And Karia Atkins said that "I don’t think it’s just social networks, I think it’s technology in general. I make time to read." Following along that line Deena said this:
Bottom line…the social networking sites only interfere with reading as we choose to allow them to interfere. And even then, it wouldn’t be the fault of the sites…it would be ours. Life is all about choices.
There are parts of our lives that we don't have a lot of freedom of choice over. There's work that needs to be done, children that need to be tended, pets that need to be walked, meals that need to be made. It's the times in between that leave us with choices. Technology can help with audiobooks and ebook readers. You can even read ebooks on your iPhone or in your email with Daily Lit. When we say that we don't have time to read what we're saying is that we're not making time to read.
Tiffany Aller describes herself as a reader and doesn't understand why people who say that they don't have time to read don't recognize they are making a choice.
It's always amazed me when other people profess to have no time to read. Bullshit. Pure, unadulterated bullshit. They're simply not making time to read.
Emily at One is Not Enough offers a strategy for people who are looking to squeeze in some reading time.
It's hard to find the time to read when you are as busy as many of us are. But trust me, if you keep a book by your bed (I have a stack next to mine) then I promise you can find ten minutes to read before you fall asleep. Even if you only get a few pages or a chapter in, you are still making time to read.
At the beginning of the year Jodi Cleghorn set a goal of reading one book a month. What she learned is that in order to do this she had to make it a priority.
Wild Swans had been beckoning me from the book shelf, where it had been adopted from an old friend of ours so I chose to begin the year with that. I didn't get it finished before the end of January and realised it was a really bad omen not to get through my first book for the year in the alotted time. What January taught me (other than some amazing things about China and mostly awful things about Mao's version of communism) was that to read a book a month, I had to make time to read a book a month. This meant cutting back on the time I was spending at the computer at night (being not much of a TV freak).
Does the internet keeping me away from reading? Not most of the time, no. There are times when I have to schedule reading into my day and there are days when I don't read a single page in a book. Making time to read is a choice that it's importing to me. Now if you
