Your first step in the art of reading
Reading is one of the best habits or hobbies not only a great time pass but it also increases our knowledge, vocabulary, language skills, and more importantly, gives an eye to see the world differently.
Three years ago when I started reading books and started to develop it as one of my hobbies, I faced many problems. I started with highly rated and recommended books on the internet, but after reading one or two chapters I did not find any interest in any of them. Another major problem I faced initially is I wasn’t able to understand what the writer actually wants to say, it was mainly because of my weak vocabulary.
I talked to many people who face similar problems when they started reading or plan to develop reading as their hobby. As a beginner you are going to face some of these problems I mentioned here like:
- Not finding what interests you
- Not being able to understand what the writer wants to say
- Not being able to read enough and sometimes you may feel lost.
Here I’m discussing some of the problems I faced when I started reading and also try to acknowledge these problems as of my experience.
When you start reading, the major problem you are going to face is not being able to find books or genera that interest you or not being able to find a book that develops interests in you…… but that actually a perfect start.
When you start reading you actually don’t know what are you finding and what interests you, you start searching for highly recommended and highly rated books, but still, you may not find the perfect book, don’t get sad about it or feel low, it is because these recommended and rated book are interests of others, not yours. You actually have to apply the hit and trial method. But as you apply this method you find yourself becoming a book dragon even before becoming a book worm.
….. Book dragon is a person with lots of unread books, and also don’t want to share them, similar to dragons in movies who is acting as a protector of gold …….
But it's ok that’s actually the first step….. this happens because you have to try many different books to actually find what interests you. Then you have a pile of unread, partially read, half-read books, that’s not wrong, it all vanishes and all pay off when you find the book and the genera you actually like. Then you have a pile of books you actually read…., it take a little while.
After finding perfect genera or a book, sometimes we still can’t figure out what actually a writer wants to say, it may have many reasons like weak vocabulary or unable to concentrate, etc. Don’t mind just go with the flow and complete the book, during this time your brain develops an outline map of the story, the second time you read you get the complete picture. It also happens because of weak vocabulary but that’s not a problem everyone has a limited number of words and they repeat them in a pattern, read initial two or three chapters and find the meaning of unknown words, after three chapters you find that these words are repeating and you may barely found any new word.
Another problem I saw and felt personally is that “I don’t read enough or unable to read like a person who I see on social media, TV and other places who read the whole book in a night”. Yes I know there are some techniques to read faster, but then you are comparing your first step with someone with 10 or 20 steps, the people you see on many places actually have years of the reading experience (I share fast reading techniques in my next article).
Everyone starts reading with small numbers of pages like 5, 10, 20, or more. It really doesn’t matter from where you start the thing that matters is continuity. No matter how many pages you are reading the thing that actually matters is daily reading. Sometimes you don’t feel like reading or so, then you may read already read books, try to find some new book which interests you by reading about the author, book intro and reviews.
…. Even when you read 10 pages daily that’s means 3650 pages a year, that’s means approx. 10 to 12 books, and that’s a great number to start….
Sometimes it happens you feel lost or beside having lots of books you still don’t get interested in any of them, it happens sometimes because of many reasons. Don’t feel bad about it, you may do many things in this condition like reading something light, reading already read books, rearranging your books, etc. I normally read philosophy and scriptures but really like to read Hindi, Urdu poetry, and sometimes English poetry too, I also enjoy reading manga beside they are costly but I still like them.
The final and foremost important thing you need be a reader is people with similar interest like friends who actually read or a reading community because sometimes we feel lost and unable to find direction, in that case, we need someone who helps us, encourage us, motivate us.
