I have an on-off relationship with reading. Every so often, I’ll go on a kick where I want to get my Goodreads numbers up for the year, and I’ll grab an unread title from my bookshelf to carry for a few weeks. In that same span, I’ll probably grab a title or two from the little free libraries that dot my neighborhood in Baltimore. Reading becomes my entire personality for a few hundred pages, and then I get bored.
I don’t mean to — I pick my books carefully and know that they’re within my wheelhouse, but I just run out of steam. To me, part of the problem is that I like big books (and I cannot lie). I’ll grab David Lynch’s Room to Dream, which has 562 pages, or Stephen King’s The Stand, with over 1,000 pages, and then I’m stuck carrying a paper brick for who knows how long.