I miss books

Recently I ran across this Facebook memory of one of my posts from 2013:

Other people have to make their husbands hide their book from them so they’ll do normal functions like eat & sleep, right? That’s not just me? It’s totally normal adult behavior?

It’s really difficult to try to convey the feelings of loss that memory stirred up within me. I felt gut-punched to be confronted by this former self whose life was so defined by books, when nowadays books – actual, physical books – play almost no part in my life. It felt like glimpsing a ghost. Because the woman who wrote that in 2013 is gone.

The woman who read the first 6 Harry Potter books in 12 days. Whose housemate felt compelled to check on her because she was sobbing so loudly when Ames prayed for Jack at the end of Gilead. Who read Jane Eyre once a year every year since she was 14 and never grew tired of it. Who, in a mini-van surrounded by her best friends on her bachelorette party road-trip, had her nose stuck in a book, beaming and tearing up with unabashed joy upon first reading Captain Wentworth’s letter to Anne at the end of Persuasion. Who had to slam Deathly Hallows shut and curl up in her husband’s lap to ugly cry when Dobby died. Who wouldn’t dream of leaving for vacation without taking at least 3 books with her…

That woman? Is dead.

All right. Drama queen. Take it down a few notches. That woman is not dead.

She’s in a coma.

Because life moves in stages. As melodramatic as I can feel about it sometimes, I know life stages down the road will include a lot more curling up with a good book and a lot less cleaning up bodily fluids than my current stage might suggest. That book-obsessed woman will wake from her coma one day, raring to go, and God help anyone who stands between her and the nearest library!

Making it work

So how has this bibliophile Mama survived the past 3+ years of tiny-child-rearing without time to read? I combine 3 technological tools that have helped me cope with losing books, and, if I’m being honest, have probably improved my outlook on books overall.

The first tool is Goodreads.

Do you know about Goodreads? I’ll spare you a long explanation; if I start gushing I won’t shut up about it. If you’re not familiar, go check it out! Simply put: Goodreads helps me keep track of books I’ve read and make lists of books I want to read.

As a mom of littles, when someone recommends a great book to me, I often want to elaborately sigh and grunt, “Terrific. I’ll get around to reading that in 15 years when I have the time.”

Great news! Goodreads actually will remind me in 15 years of all the books that were recommended to me during that hazy fog of life with an infant. I enter book recommendations right into Goodreads, and I can rest easy knowing that someday I really will get around to reading that!

The second tool has been wholeheartedly embracing something I used to despise: Audiobooks.

Listening to a book used to give me the heebie-geebies. Why would someone listen to a book? Don’t you want to hold it? Turn the pages with your hands? Take in the words with your eyes? Imagine voices and tones as you want, not how some narrator dictates them to you? Besides, it’s so much faster to read than to have someone read aloud to you. The only exception I would make to audiobooks was sometimes on a long car trip I would listen to a book that I had previously read. But listening to a brand new book read by someone else? No, thank you. Only actual books were good enough for me.

And then I had kids. Goodbye, free time! I never appreciated you enough.

I found myself faced with a voracious desire to read and no time in which to do it. But you know what I have more of now? Time in the car. I have to drive to childcare, then work, then back to childcare, then home. That’s 60-75 minutes of drive time every day I work, and I finally decided to try filling that time with books.

It has been Awesome.

I don’t know what old me was thinking with my hatred of audiobooks. Though they’ll never beat the real thing, audiobooks are delightful. A look through my Goodreads [seriously, it’s so great!!] tells me that since the beginning of 2015 I’ve listened to 50 new books. That’s 50 books I never would have had the pleasure of experiencing if I hadn’t given audiobooks a chance. I’m so happy I did!

In this stage of life, my options are limited: I can listen to books, or I can live a book-less life. I choose option #1.

The third tool I use is Overdrive.

Overdrive is basically the library for audiobooks. What? You think I bought 50 audiobooks in the past 3 years?! You obviously aren’t well acquainted with my cheapskatity. (I’m making it a word. I like it.) Mama may not have much time to read, but Mama has even LESS money to throw away on books she’s not sure she’s going to love. Enter: Overdrive.

Using the Overdrive app, I can borrow audiobooks with my local library card and download them to my phone. FOR FREE. Yes, it is as fabulous as it sounds, and you should scurry along to set up your Overdrive account today.

[Full disclosure: the frustrating downside to Overdrive is the borrow time for audiobooks is 21 days, after which the book expires from your electronic device. 3 weeks isn’t always enough time for me to finish listening to a book, and so sometimes I find myself having to wait to borrow the same book again in order to finish it. Ultimately this doesn’t bother me enough to cause me to buy the audiobooks, though. Again: cheapskate.]

All 3 of these technological tools have become some of My All-Time Favorite Things in the past few years. If you’re a book lover, I encourage you to check out some or all of them!

Little by little

A few months have now passed since I ran across the memory of that woman, the former me who literally had to be torn from her books. I wrote much of this post months ago, partly to comfort myself that books were still a large part of my life, even if I rarely held them anymore. But the desire was awakened within me, and I began itching to hold and read books again.

Carpe Diem, I decided. Having recently weaned my youngest child, I found I wasn’t instantly lapsing into unconsciousness the moment my kids laid down for naps. (Turns out the act of creating sustenance for other human beings with my own body took up a lot of physical energy. Who knew?) I finally made it through the years of pregnancy and nursing, and the reward I’m giving myself is reading books again.

Upon realizing I only had 1 bookmark, I decided a good sign of my new commitment to reading would be to make myself a few fun new bookmarks. I made 20. If anyone is interested in forming a Bookmarks Anonymous group, go ahead and just count me in.

In the past few months I have managed to read 10 physical books! (Compare this to 5 books in the past 2 years combined.) My soul is so happy, you guys.

I think that old book-loving self may be coming out of her coma!