I have always loved reading books – as I sit here in my sweatshirt that says “Happiest When Reading”. I started reading at a rather young age, and would come up with my own “homework” to read a certain amount of chapters in my textbooks. I hated the direction of “do not read ahead” that would come from my teachers. In my first semester in college, back when I thought I wanted to be a high school English teacher, my very first college class was American Literature. Our textbooks? 19 novels. I loved that class. When I graduated college, I was burnt out and my “reading for fun” side was absent. I didn’t really start reading again until I had my first child and found myself wanting something to do while I adapted to being a first time mom – a stay-at-home-mom! I read 11 books in 2018. Then, while pregnant with my second child, I read 6 books in 2019. In 2020, I read 19. In 2021, I read 26.
Then, something happened. Truly, I don’t know what happened, but something did happen.
Here are my numbers since 2022:
2022: 75 books
2023: 60 books
2024: 50 books
Currently (as of June 1, 2025), I’m sitting at 22 books.
The joy I have found in reading books is one I don’t really know how to explain, but I’ll try. It’s so incredibly easy to sit on your phone and scroll… and scroll… and scroll some more. I still catch myself doing this, but it’s way less than it used to be. It used to be a way I could “turn off” my own thoughts. I could mindlessly scroll and focus on other people’s lives rather than whatever I had going on in mine. But, that gets exhausting. At some point, I decided it’d be healthier to read books. To escape to a fictional setting with fictional people. To fully immerse myself in the world the book had created. My husband also enjoys reading, so every night after the kids are asleep, we ask each other what we should do that night. At least 2 nights a week, we just read. Now we look back at ourselves when we used to binge sitcoms all night every night and laugh. We can barely handle watching 2 episodes in a row of something now!
All of my family, closest friends, and coworkers know that I love to read. The most common question is: how do you find that many books to read? I actually don’t know! They just keep showing up! Only this year did I start re-reading books that I’ve previously read and loved. I just love a good story and there truly are endless stories out there.
The next question is usually: how do you find time to read that many books? And to that I say, putting my phone down and opening a book. I also really love my Kindle, and I definitely read faster on it. Don’t get me wrong, I love a good hardback book (and my favorite gift is a Barnes and Noble gift card). But you’d be surprised how many pages you can read on a Kindle when you give yourself an hour or two.
There’s no real point to anything I’ve said so far other than simply trying to encourage you to read more. Sure, I’d be a bad writer for this Catholic website if I didn’t encourage you to read the writing of Saints or modern day theologians – but truly, just find a genre you enjoy reading, and go for it! Get off your phone, get off social media, stop watching the news, turn off the sitcom, whatever it is that you find yourself filling your spare time with… try opening a book next time!
