Favourite Form to Read

Nothing beats curling up naturally on the sofa the old-fashioned way while it rains outside, just with a cup of tea and the undisturbed pleasure of reading. No phone, no ping of notifications of any kind. Ever read a book? The sort you want to devour in one go because it’s just gripping enough? You stay awake for it, sacrificing sleep. I used to do that as a child, reading under the blankets. Yes, we had woollen blankets back then, not duvets. The books published these days no longer charm me. The odd one might be worth reading, but the truth is, they’re far from interesting and struggle to hold attention. That’s not my fault. It’s the modern writing style. It’s tailored to today’s people, who don’t read, don’t like reading, and can barely focus on what’s written for long. New writers no longer describe a scene exhaustively, nor do they flesh out their characters. Imagination is left to fill in the gaps. Not necessarily a bad thing. When I think back to the trashy romance novels a classmate used to read, full of men with particularly unlikeable personalities, egos the size of your average narcissist, and body hair… well, you’d rather leave some things to the imagination than be subjected to sweaty chest hair paired with a foul temperament that, for some reason, made the female characters swoon.

The best form to read is a book, a story printed on paper. Short stories, long stories, it doesn’t matter. I love children’s tales just as much as those for adults. I read that parents hardly read to their children anymore. Whether this produces children who do read is questionable. I doubt it. I read to all my children, and for years in schools, and they certainly didn’t all turn into bookworms. But you can spot a bookworm early. Always fussing with books, even before they can read, if only to taste-test the paper.

_{14.7.25
Picture
#freewrite #reading #thoughts #steemexclusive}