My life has been in a bit of upheaval recently, and it’s definitely impacted my reading habits. First off, I moved from Austin to Los Angeles at the end of June. The months leading up to the move were pretty stressful as I obsessed over every little detail and generally drove myself crazy. I did fit in some reading during that time, but it mostly consisted of listening to audiobooks.
Now that I’m more settled here in LA, it feels like I haven’t been reading as much as I used to. The nature of my work has changed such that I don’t end up listening to as many audiobooks while I’m working. I haven’t been going for walks like I used to in my neighborhood back in Austin (but I was already bad about that before I moved), and when it comes to the printed word, I’ve been working on several books for a pretty long time.
Anna Karenina is the worst offender by far. I started that in December of 2012 and only pick it up to read about once a month. I’m maybe 400 pages into that 1000+ page tome, and I’d still like to finish it if I can. I don’t normally read that far into a book without finishing it. I’m also still “reading” a short story collection that I started in March and last read in April.
More recently, I started Neil Gaiman’s newest book, which is short and should be a quick read, but I just haven’t been making time to pick it up. Of course, I read an entire book by Lisa Lutz in the middle of reading the Gaiman, so maybe it’s just me.
There is also the fact that I’ve been reading a lot of screenplays recently. Reading so many scripts has been taking up a lot of my free time when I’m not devoting it to playing video games, but reading scripts just doesn’t feel the same as reading a good book.
Either way, I’ll be done with the scripts soon and I think I’ll be able to devote more time to reading for fun. As for my huge audiobook collection, if listening to them is the only thing that will get me outside for a walk, then maybe that’s for the best. I just need to find a good part of my new neighborhood to take a walk.
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