This week’s Booking Through Thursday question:

Would you say that you read about the same amount now as when you were younger? More? Less? Why?

Definitely, I don’t read as many books as I did when I was young, when I made trips to the library almost every week. As a publishers’ sales rep, I hardly read anything that was not on our list of books to be sold to the booksellers. My focus was narrow. We moved to Bequia eleven years ago, after retiring, and I packed along about 16 moving-boxes of books I’d accumulated with which I refused to part. Dennis built me a “wall of words” (as Marty calls it) - high shelves in both the living room and kitchen - to store them all. For the first years I read voraciously, but also worried (a bit paranoid…) that I’d soon run out of good reading material. I even made up a reading schedule so I would give every book a fair chance, and even began rereading (and reassessing) old favourites. (I know, very anal of me, but then I also have all of those books shelved in a rather strict personal ordering system.) So I continued to “acquire.” I now have stacks of unread books - but books that I do plan to eventually get around to reading - on the shelves and the floor of the closet.

I got off to a good start 11 years ago and literally consumed books at a great pace. But when I began writing my own stories, then studied writing and publishing online, I found my focus (not to mention my time) narrowed, and I became much more selective in what I read. I never liked reading trashy novels in the first place (a degree in English Lit will do that to you), but after studying editing I’ve now become even more discerning and can spot bad writing a mile away. If I could just figure out how to keep that same bad writing out of my own novels…

But back to the main part of the question - No, I definitely read less now than I did when I was younger. It’s a matter of quality being more impotant than quantity. I’ve become much more particular and prefer to read good books slowly, to savour the words and stories written by master authors, to see and try to understand how they work their magic. Just as Tom Conti’s main character in the 1983 film Reuben, Reuben said, I don’t know why anyone would ever want to learn how to speed-read; I’d rather learn how to slow down my reading so I can enjoy every word (or something like that…). Great movie about a writer, by the way. It’s a pity that it doesn’t seem to be available any longer.

And then there’s this to look forward to… A friend in his seventies told me that the best part about getting older and suffering from a failing memory is that you can reread all of the books you read when you were young and it’s like reading them for the very first time - because you don’t remember a damn thing about them!

Griz’ favourite author seems to be Cormac McCarthy. That kitten has good taste!