Gothically Captivating Reading

Reading when you are young is like being taken on a journey down an unknown path. It is magical and mysterious and you are lost in a world that only you know about, while all around you people are doing other mundane things.

As a writer I feel this way when I start a new story. I have a seed of an idea that makes my fingers itch to get it down on paper. But as a writer who reads, this captivation sometimes alludes me. On a blog post I've started following another writer mentioned this in the comments. That reading to learn craft has taken away some of the initial wonder that follows starting a new book. I've heard this before. At a book signing for an author whose books I enjoy, at conferences from agents and editors, and on writing websites and blogs. I didn't have a name for what this was. But it saddened me a little. Did growing in my craft as a writer mean I was losing the joy of reading?

That would be a horrible sacrifice. And what would I do with all these books that I still haven't read? Good heavens, would my book fetish just be that... A frenzied need to collect stories I'd never be able to read or if I did start, never be able to finish!

Then I read a wonderful article in the Huffington Post that helped it all make sense. It helped me give a name to what I've learned to do as a writer who reads (clears throat) A LOT.

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The post was entitled 11 Lessons That 'Jane Eyre' Can Teach Every 21st Century Woman About How to Live Well by Zoe Triska. This article helped me make sense of what I was doing when I was reading. I was being an active reader. I was absorbing craft, learning to think critically about what I was reading, and consciously, but often subconsciously using this for my own writing. As I read through Ms. Triska's article defending one of her favorite books I realized my joy of reading hadn't lessened. Instead it had become MORE. I needed good writing that was invisible to me, the reader, to become swept away in a story. Something that I did instinctively as a child. If a story didn't captivate me I didn't worry about putting it down and moving on to something that did. As an adult I started conditioning myself not to do this. Either because I didn't want to give up on a book I'd paid good money for, or because the story was by a writer I'd always enjoyed before, but wasn't impressed by this time, the list could go on. I'd like to say this has made me more discerning in my book purchasing. I'm not sure if this is truly the case or not. I do hesitate to buy books more than in the past. So now I'm going to try not to feel guilty if I can't finish a book that doesn't hold my interest as much as it should. Maybe that will give me more time to re-read some of my perennial favorites, like JANE EYRE, which celebrated its anniversary last week.

What about you? Do you find yourself being an active reader? What are some of your all time favorite books that have swept you away and why?