TOP TEN TUESDAY | CHANGES IN MY READING LIFE

This week’s topic is an interesting one, but also a difficult one. Most aspects of my reading life have remained relatively constant, with minor situational changes. But here are a few things that are different now than they were about three years ago, whether the changes will persist or whether some of them will revert is anyone’s guess!

Motherhood. Well, the tiny elephant in this room is, of course, a toddler. I used to read at least a book a week, usually more. Getting through more than 50 books a year was easy, and reviewing books as I requested them rarely proved to be a challenge. Then a tiny human showed up and everything changed. I didn’t read more than five new books the year after her birth – I re-read easy books like the Harry Potter series and parenting books (primarily ones that offered any advice on how to make a tiny human eat and sleep so I could crawl out of the fetal position and stop crying for long enough to do the same). I started reading again after I came off my mood stabilizing meds and have been slowly increasing how many books I’ve gone through ever since. But I’m still not back to the reading speed I managed before, and my blog doesn’t get nearly as many posts (I used to do at least five a week, now it’s two). It’s definitely been more than worth it, but it has been a big change.

Audiobooks. I never really listened to audiobooks before having a kid, but they suddenly gained appeal because of all the time I spend doing mindless tasks that keep my hands busy, but not my brain. I’ve loved including them in my reading life and been pleasantly surprised by my ability to actually pay attention enough to follow the stories and information.

YA to adult. I used to read a lot of YA books. They were easy to get into, fast to read, engaging, and often had important points to make. YA books didn’t really exist when I was a teenager, so I grew up reading adult books and whatever books for young readers I could get my hands on. But they didn’t have the diversity, representation, relatable characters or relevant issues and plots that today’s selection have. So I think it was appealing to catch up on what I had missed and find some new favourites. I hope one day the couple of years I spent reading YA will help me share some books I loved with my daughter when she’s a teenager. After I had a kid, though, I stopped craving the easy escapism of YA books the same way I had, and started looking for books that reflected my current experiences and concerns – motherhood, issues that might affect my daughter or that I want to know more about to teach her, and mental health issues that help me deal with my own.

Reading more non-fiction. I have no idea why, but non-fiction and memoirs have gained a strong attraction for me in the past year especially. As I said in the previous section, this is partly due to wanting to educate myself to pass that knowledge on to my daughter as she’s growing up. I also think that being a stay-at-home mom, as wonderful as it is, can be difficult. I already missed learning when I left university and started working. But now I rarely talk to other adults, I don’t have a job or any call for my expertise or opinions on anything. Problem-solving consists of figuring out how to get my kid to eat something other than granola bars or trying to figure out what to pack for preschool. It’s not exactly intellectually stimulating. So I crave information and something for my mind to sink its teeth into and turn over. Something to engage with and learn from.

New topics. Motherhood is, of course, a topic of great interest to me now that I’m a mother, and particularly now that I know how isolating motherhood is and how little it is respected or appreciated, even by those closest to us. There’s judgement and competition in pretty much every interaction involving kids, and it’s exhausting. On top of that, there are so many things to decide and worry about for our kids, particularly in today’s world. Figuring out how to balance their need for increasing independence with a need to protect them from all of the horrible things in the world that could hurt them is exhausting and impossible. So reading other mothers’ accounts helps me feel less alone and helps me sort through some of the emotions that come with the territory. I’ve also had a lot of physical and mental health issues to deal with in a short time, and have been reading a lot of books on the subject to help me deal with them. Memoirs are high on my list, particularly those that deal with mental health issues (even ones that aren’t similar to my own) or physical problems. Again, I find it helps me feel less alone and helps me sort through the emotions that accompany the daily strain of managing a chronic medical condition, anemia, a serious and debilitating injury and severe mental health issues, all while taking care of a toddler and trying to be a decent human being. Mostly failing and feeling like a failure. So it has been helpful to find people whose stories have held challenges, and who have found a way to keep going in spite of difficult circumstances. It has helped to find people whose stories are harder than my own, too, because it puts things into perspective and helps me focus on all the wonderful things I do have in my life, in spite of all the bad.

Kid’s books. I never read them before. Not since I was a kid myself. But I’m learning what makes a good kid’s story – and finding some that my daughter enjoys reading and that I enjoy reading to her. Ones with intricate illustrations that give us more than the story to discuss, ones that use humour and others that are refreshingly irreverent. It has been a fascinating new area for me, and seeing my daughter’s love of books blossom has been one of the most wonderful experiences of my life. She now has whole books memorized and sits in her room with her owl night light “reading” to herself when she can’t sleep. She asks for me to read book after book to her on rainy or low-energy days, and she giggles at all the funny bits even if she’s heard them a thousand times. I’m also learning to appreciate the authors whose books help me teach her about difficult concepts like feelings and morality and empathy. And those that provide diversity that is lacking in our very white part of the world. I have a new appreciation for authors who write truly great kids books, and am grateful to have had such a wonderful reason to explore them.

When I read. I used to read on the bus to and from work (about an hour and a half a day), on lunch breaks, in the evenings, at bedtime and on weekends. Now I read when my kid is occupied doing something else, listen to audiobooks when I’m cooking or folding laundry or walking somewhere and occasionally take some time off to really focus on it (usually twice a year when Dewey’s 24-Hour Readathon happens). Once in a while if I really get into a book I will read in the evening after she’s in bed, but usually I’m tired and I just want to watch TV and go to sleep. So my total amount of reading time is less now than it was, and happens at different times and in different ways.

No review copies. I used to review books for Random House, but when they merged with Penguin there were a lot of staffing and structural changes that meant the person I had been dealing with was no longer there. It also happened around the time I became a mom, and building a new relationship with the media team at Penguin-Random House or trying to establish connections with other publishers wasn’t something I had the time or energy for. In the end it has been working better for me to just get my own copies of books. It means no pressure to read books by a certain date, no worries about DNFing books that aren’t holding my interest, and no guilt about ARCs languishing unread on my shelves. One day I hope to be able to re-commit to blogging as I used to, and will want to re-build my relationships with publishers, but for now I’m pretty content to support them as a customer. I’m lucky that I can afford to, and I definitely want to be supporting publishers and authors as much as I can.

More ebooks. Because I’m reading more in small chunks of time while my kid is snuggling with me at bedtime or reading on my lap or colouring or playing with a friend, it really helps to have ebooks on my phone. It’s always with me, and it gives me the opportunity to bring out a book and read whenever I have even five minutes of down time. I cobble together enough time through the week doing this to get through 200-300 pages without really sitting down specifically to read, so I think that’s definitely worthwhile!

That’s all I can think of for now. What about you guys? How has your reading changed over the past few years? For any moms out there, how did your reading change when you entered motherhood? Did you find any similarities to my changes?

Top Ten Tuesday is a weekly link-up feature created by The Broke and the Bookish and hosted by Jana at That Artsy Reader Girl. Every week TTT has a different topic, and everyone who links up has to create a link of ten items that fit that topic. To see past and upcoming topics, go here.