My Reading Journey

I have been a reader as long as I can remember, starting with The Worst Witch and Jacqueline Wilson books. I remember that I was in year 5 at primary school when my teacher Miss Cunningham started reading Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone to us, we didn’t finish the book in class and it was another 2 years before I read it all the way through, and I never stopped reading it again. If you ask my friends or anyone who’s ever spent more than 10 minutes talking to me “what does Hannah love?” Their answer would be Harry Potter before anything else. It’s been an obsession since the year 2000. (And yes JK Rowling has broken my heart with her twitter rants but I’m pretty sure Albus Dumbledore wrote the books anyway).

Over the last 4 years my reading took a real dive, I had previously been someone who read before going to sleep every night no matter what, even after a night out and drunk as a skunk and not taking in a word, and somehow the habit was broken and I’ve barely finished 10 books a year and gone months with out picking one up but I also couldn’t seem to motivate myself to do so. Then in December 2019 I came across booktube and I was seeing people saying they had read 70-150 books in the last year and I was thinking how did they do that???

Well they made it a priority for one, something that being honest with myself I hadn’t been doing, and they were reading things they were excited about, another thing I hadn’t been doing. I had continued to struggle along with books I just wasn’t that in to, or I wasn’t in the mood for and again the result was that I just didn't then pick them up.

So I decided it was okay to actively stop reading a book if it wasn’t holding my interest, instead of just forgetting about it. I had also been someone who only read one book at a time, which just doesn’t work for me anymore. I now usually have at least one audiobook and one physical book and an ebook on the go so I can dip in and out of each depending on my mood.

In January one of my goals for the year was to read 30 books, ideally 20 physical/ebooks and 10 audiobooks, so double what I had read in 2019. I rearranged my living room so I had a little reading nook where I could get cosy. By the end of January I had read 15 books and hadn't turned on my TV since the 1st January! And most importantly, I was in love with reading again. I was reading from so many different genres and age groups. I have well and truly embraced the fact that as a 30 year old woman my preferred age ranges are middle grade and young adult.

Now its nearing the end of September and I've read 145 books and showing no signs of slowing down. I've become so passionate about reading and books that I've started this blog and a bookstagram account. I started low-key participating in readathons in April, my first one being

the OWLs Magical readathon created by G at Bookroast on YouTube and then the following month Believathon created by Gavin at How to Train Your Gavin also on YouTube, both of whom have contributed a great deal to my new found enthusiasm despite me having never actually met them.

I am currently participating in Becca's Bookoplathon created by Becca and the Books (youtube). I've found that month long readathons suit my reading patterns best as I working full time I only read about 20 pages a day on the days that I am at work and then devour several books on my days off and mostly I use them for the prompts to help me decide my TBR.

Set TBR's have really helped me up my reading as my goodreads want to read shelf is about 300 books long and its hard to know what to pick next. There have been times I have wondered if I'm turning it into a sport, a bit of a Pokemon gotta catch em all scenario, however I am genuinely enjoying pretty much everything I've read this year, it never feels like a chore, and in 2020 when we've basically been told to be antisocial anyway what else was I supposed to do while staying in for the majority of the year.