I WAS ALWAYS a reader. As a kid, I walked to the library several times a week and stayed up late reading with a torch. I checked out so many books and returned them so quickly the librarian once snapped, “Don’t take home so many books if you’re not going to read them all.”
“But I did read them all,” I said back.
I did my undergraduate degree in English and went on to get a master’s in literature. When I created my online dating profile, I made my screen name “missbibliophile52598.” Filling out the “favourite books” section, I let my taste in literature speak for me: One Hundred Years of Solitude, A Moveable Feast, White Teeth, The Namesake, The Known World, The God of Small Things, How to Read the Air.
But I realised it had been more than two years since I had read most of those titles. I had stopped reading gradually, the way one heals or dies. I tried to maintain my bookish persona. I joined book clubs that I never attended. I requested a library book everyone was reading, only to return it unread.
I still loved the idea of reading. Whenever I found a bookstore, I would linger between the shelves for hours as if catching up with old friends, picking out volumes I had read and buying new ones. But it was clear to me: I was becoming a person I did not know.
This story is from the June 2021 edition of Reader's Digest UK.
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This story is from the June 2021 edition of Reader's Digest UK.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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