{"id":5182,"date":"2021-02-22T13:43:04","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T18:43:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/?p=5182"},"modified":"2021-02-22T13:43:04","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T18:43:04","slug":"jonathan-revisiting-my-passion-rocky-history-with-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/2021\/02\/22\/jonathan-revisiting-my-passion-rocky-history-with-books\/","title":{"rendered":"Jonathan: Revisiting my passion & rocky history with books"},"content":{"rendered":"

Happy February! It\u2019s almost been a year since quarantine began. That\u2019s…scary to think about. So, to pivot from that horrifying realization, let\u2019s focus on what would\u2019ve been a great distraction from reality for me: reading. Now first, let\u2019s run through my relationship with this activity across the years.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I remember my elementary school days, where each Tuesday, my mom and I would go to the library. Those visits were the absolute best parts of the week. Everytime I\u2019d walk out with a stack of new books while returning last week\u2019s books. At my reading prime, I\u2019d read multiple books a day, which to be honest wasn\u2019t too impressive given my childhood self didn\u2019t have any friends nor anything else better to do. Yes, it was a lonely childhood.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Now as a college sophomore, I look at that version of me in awe. If you observed me in my daily life, there\u2019d be no way to tell whether I was literate or not. You will never catch me reading a book or news publication of any sort. I think the last time I read a book in full was my junior year of highschool\u2014and that was only because my english teacher Mr. Dury had both me and my fellow classmates charmed into doing any assignment for him. And before that, the last full book I had read was a poem anthology, which I\u2019m almost not sure counts. All my news is from reddit headlines, youtube video titles (not even the videos themselves), instagram stories, and most importantly, podcasts. Thank goodness for podcasts. I go through those like BU students buying Chick-fil-a nuggets sold by a random business club at the GSU link tables on a pre-COVID BU Monday. NPR can take all my money and then some.<\/span><\/p>\n

Anyway, I decided during our quarantine summer to try to rekindle my youthful reading passion. This attempt did not go well. I started off with a very intellectual book: Harry Potter and the Sorcerer\u2019s Stone but in French. I figured it\u2019d be difficult to dive right into an adult book, given it had been so long since my last fully completed book. My thought was that I should start with something familiar and achievable. But just to add a little challenge, it was the French translation. After reading 15 pages across 3 days, I quickly switched to the French audiobook, then the English book, and then the English audio book. By the end of summer, I had listened to all of the Harry Potter series in audiobook form. But, if anybody asked, I\u2019d say I read them cover to cover\u2014coming out of it even with a few papercuts from all the page turning I did.<\/span><\/p>\n

So, I guess the lesson from all this is that I\u2019m just more of a podcast\/audiobook guy. I think it\u2019s also just very indicative of how short my attention span has become. On the bright side, it\u2019s very easy to impress me; if you tell me you read, I will give you the utmost respect. Maybe I\u2019ll try reading again next summer.<\/p>\n

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Happy February! It\u2019s almost been a year since quarantine began. That\u2019s…scary to think about. So, to pivot from that horrifying realization, let\u2019s focus on what would\u2019ve been a great distraction from reality for me: reading. Now first, let\u2019s run through my relationship with this activity across the years.\u00a0 I remember my elementary school days, where … Continue reading Jonathan: Revisiting my passion & rocky history with books<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2018,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[44596],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2018"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5182"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5184,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5182\/revisions\/5184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/comblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}