A lot of ambitious promises are made on the night of 31st December, and among the bibliophiles, we tend to aim our reading goals a bit higher than what we can cope with. But what readers fail to factor in, is life itself. If every reader could escape to a solitary room with unlimited coffee or chai, they could probably finish 365 books in 365 days. Unfortunately, in the real world, this ideal situation doesn’t exist. Here is The Bombay Circle Press’ take on the relationship between reading goals and how it affects you reading experience.
The TBR list goes on increasing and so does the pressure in our minds to complete it. It becomes a task, instead of an activity that helps to nourish your brain. And when it becomes a task, we often feel tired even with the thought of completing it. This often contributes to a vicious cycle of being unable to read and pushes you further into a reading slump. The unprecedented stress we put on ourselves to finish something is often accompanied by an unreasonable lookout on our schedules. We often do not factor in the day to day activities that take up a lot of our mental space, the constant pull of social media platforms, and not to mention the dystopian qualities lurking all around us. It gets tough to keep your attention on a book but it is also very necessary to keep going.
So to avoid all this stress, readers should aim to achieve a realistic amount of reading in a year or month. Whenever it gets a bit hectic, you can always pick a shorter book that won’t take a lot of time for you to read and you would still not fall behind your goals. You can always pick up anthologies and read a story per day or pick up poetry collections and read one poem a day, at your leisure. But reading is a habit that requires a lot of work for it to gain momentum. It is a habit that will keep you company till your last days. Reading goals will be renewed every year, but what is important is that you keep going, little by little, until you can’t go a day without reading. It can be a newspaper or a short poem, it matters as long as you are reading.
It is vital to remember the purpose behind reading. May it be recreational, educational or habitual, if you lose sight of the purpose, it becomes easier to fall further away from it. If participating in a reading competition helps you, then good for you. But if it doesn’t, take a break and relax for a little bit.
If you are in a reading slump and would like to look for anthologies or short novels, then worry not! The Bombay Circle Press has a diverse range of books and we are sure you can find something that is suitable to your reading needs without reading goals hampering your reading experience.