Musing Mondays is a weekly meme that asks you to choose one of the following prompts to answer:
I’m currently reading…
Up next I think I’ll read…
I bought the following book(s) in the past week…
I’m super excited to tell you about (book/author/bookish-news)…
I’m really upset by (book/author/bookish-news)…
I can’t wait to get a copy of…
I wish I could read ___, but…
I blogged about ____ this past week…
Welcome to July. Goodness where is the time going this year? It seems to be going by very fast!
Random Question: Do you ever get teased or looked at oddly for reading?
My recent travels made me notice a few things I have been overlooking for a long time. I love to read, I always try to bring a book with me either in my Kindle or a hard copy anytime I go somewhere. I do this with crochet as well, but let’s stick to the books for the moment, lol. At home, I tend to get more judgmental looks and I have even had people call me weird for choosing to sit in a park and read for several hours. I have been teased as a bookworm both good natured and not so good natured.
However, while I was abroad, I didn’t have any of those things happen. Instead, I was several times asked what I was reading and had some nice conversations about books. I noticed overall there were a lot of other people reading as well. I saw people like me reading on public transport or in parks just enjoying a nice day. I am not saying this doesn’t happen in the US and I am not saying everyone in Europe reads, but there were enough moments that happened to make me take note.
That’s some interesting insight into reading habits. One must wonder if it’s because of our dwindling attention span over here. I think social media has made it challenging for some people to engage others in conversation.
Can’t say I get odd looks when people see me with a book, but they are usually shocked when I say I don’t watch TV because I prefer to read.
Hope you have a great week.
Social media and the land of everything right now sure has had something to do with attention span. When I first arrived back overseas I even caught myself fidgeting a bit and checking my phone while on the Tube, which was silly for most of the time because no signal underground duh! Luckily I am fairly self aware of things and when I noted I was doing it I made an effort to change it and once I got on the train the phone went into my bag (headphones staying on because what can I say I like my music) and I took out my book to read or just people watched in general. I can imagine you get looks for the TV vs Read thing. I would rather read too, but I do have a habit of having the TV on in the background when I am doing most things because it helps my anxiety. Can’t tell you what is on most of the time though, lol.
I wonder if it’s because of public transport. When I visited NYC I saw a lot of people reading on the subway and bus, but in my area of the south public transportation is scarce and creepy… Maybe since Europe has better public transportation and it’s used more, more people do things like read during the commute.
https://darkestwingsreads.wordpress.com/2018/07/16/mm-july16-2018/
That could really be it. Yet another point for better public transport right? LOL People would read more too!