Here's the thing about reading

I have never been a reader. In fact I have pretty much always said I hate reading. In elementary school my mom entered Tasha and me in "Battle of the Books" - which was a competition to read books from a long list and then answer trivia questions about them. For some reason I always came away with a trophy, but it didn't help me to like reading. In junior high my mom would bribe me to read - $20 per book. I think I took her up on that offer once. I read A Wrinkle in Time. I can't remember anything about it, but I remember I liked it at the time.

Reading was always a chore, because I only read the books I had to for school. And then it was annoying because we had to dissect and analyze everything. Why couldn't the author have just written it because he/she thought it was a good story? Why did everything have to have some hidden meaning to it? I was pretty sure the teacher was making up everything anyway.

I have always felt bad about not liking to read.
As an adult I've tried reading things that would be valuable - religious, classic, biographical, educational - but it takes me so long to get through anything that I usually give up. My eyes get blurry and I get lost on the page and it feels like I re-read the same paragraph over and over before I comprehend it.

The past couple of weeks I have started reading the Hunger Games books. They are so good and I've never had such a hard time putting a book down. But I still can't decide if reading is just a waste of time.

The difference between T.V. and reading:

- A movie will tell me the whole story in a couple of hours.

- I can wash the dishes or exercise or something while watching T.V.
- With a book I give up two weeks of my life, but with T.V. I give up 2 hours.
- Although with reading you use your imagination more. It has been kind of fun to get caught up in the world of Katniss and Peeta, I find myself thinking about them all day and I wonder who Katniss will choose and it makes me happy to know that I chose Brian.

Throughout the day, while doing other things, I just sigh - wondering how it's going to end, and mad that I can't read right then - I'm pretty cranky about it. And it's frustrating knowing that even once I finish the book I still won't really know how the story ends until the third book comes out.

Brian knows that reading anything is a big deal for me to accomplish. So I'm glad that when I say, "Wow I read 150 pages today," he is proud of me and doesn't point out the dirty dishes or growing laundry. I guess I beat myself up about that enough.