Reading for the Sake of It

I love sitting in a corner, curled up in a blanket with a mug of hot chocolate. The weather should be cold, maybe even rainy. There would probably be some soft music in the background. The main object of my focus would be the 700-something-page book in my hand, perched on my folded legs.

Yep, I’m that girl. The one who would love to be on Instagram loudly debating the pros and cons of romantasy characters. I’d doomscroll reels about book boyfriends and then realize it’s the middle of the night and I have an early class the next morning.

But these days, I haven’t had the time to curl up to read just for the sake of it. I’ve been having to read a lot for class. On the other hand, A Court of Splintered Harmony is coming out, and everyone on the internet, including me, is rushing to reread the Maas-verse before the book comes out.

Between all this, I feel like I’ve forgotten what it feels like to read at my own pace, without deadlines, class discussions, or the pressure to remember everything. Reading is an art I love, but somewhere along the way, it has started to feel a little like work.

Don’t get me wrong. I love what I study. There is something wonderful about discussing books beyond whether I liked the characters or whether the ending made me want to throw the book across the room. I get to think about why stories work, how authors construct their worlds, and what their characters reveal about the people who read them. I know how lucky I am to spend my time doing this.

But there is a difference between reading a book because you want to know what happens next and reading one because you need to explain what happened, why it happened, and what it all means. Sometimes, I want to finish a book, close it, and sit there for a few minutes because I cannot believe what I have just read. I don’t necessarily want to turn that feeling into a paragraph about narrative technique.

I just want to feel it.

Of course, there’s also the internet to contend with.

Being a reader in the age of Bookstagram and BookTok is an experience of its own. There are recommendations everywhere, reading lists dedicated to particular tropes, arguments about fictional men, and people who somehow manage to finish five books in a week while I am still trying to remember which chapter I stopped at. There is always another book to read, another series to catch up on, another fictional character I apparently need to meet immediately.

And I love it. I love having people to talk to about books, finding readers who are just as emotionally invested in fictional relationships as I am, and discovering books that seem to have been written specifically for me. The internet has made reading feel like a community rather than something I have to do alone.

But it has also made it easy to forget that reading is not a race. With A Court of Splintered Harmony on the horizon, readers are revisiting the Maas-verse, refreshing their memories, and revisiting theories about what Sarah J. Maas has planned next. Naturally, I want to be part of it. I want to remember the details, revisit the characters, and lose my mind along with everyone else when the new book finally arrives.

Yet somewhere between wanting to reread the series and finding the time to do it, I have started treating my reading list like a deadline. Instead of looking forward to the next chapter, I think about how many chapters I have left. Instead of getting lost in the story, I calculate how much I can read before I have to put the book down and return to everything else.

And what happens when I don’t finish? When classes pile up, when I am tired, or when a book simply isn’t holding my attention the way I expected it to? Do I put it down and return to it when I feel like it, or do I feel guilty about the unfinished pages sitting on my bedside table?

I think I have become too familiar with the second feeling.

Perhaps that is why I miss the kind of reading I used to do without thinking about it. The kind where I could pick up a book, read for twenty minutes or three hours, and stop whenever I wanted. I could reread my favourite pages simply because I liked them or stay up far too late because I needed to know what happened next. There was just a story and the quiet happiness of being inside it.

I don’t think the answer is to stop reading for class or abandon the online reading community I enjoy so much. Studying literature has taught me to understand books in ways I might never have considered otherwise, and talking to other readers has introduced me to stories I might never have picked up on my own. I simply want to make room for reading that doesn’t have to lead anywhere.

Maybe that means rereading a favourite book without worrying about how quickly I finish it, or picking up something that has absolutely nothing to do with my coursework. Maybe it means accepting that I won’t finish every book on my list, and that this doesn’t make me any less of a reader.

Or maybe, for once, it means leaving my phone in another room, making myself a mug of hot chocolate, and opening a book without checking how many pages I should read before bed.

I know that real life doesn’t always come with the perfect weather, a cosy blanket, and a few uninterrupted hours. There will always be assignments to finish, deadlines to meet, and other things demanding my attention. I cannot spend every rainy afternoon with a book, however much I might like to.

But I don’t want to wait for the perfect afternoon to enjoy reading again, either. I want to remember that I can read a single chapter and still have a good reading day, that I can put a book down halfway through and return to it tomorrow, and that I can love a story without having to review it, analyse it, or convince someone else to read it.

At the end of the day, I didn’t fall in love with books because I wanted to finish a certain number of them. I fell in love with discovering new worlds, meeting characters who felt like friends, and getting so lost in a story that the real world could wait just a little longer.

I think I owe that girl with the oversized book, the hot chocolate, and the blanket another afternoon.

And this time, I hope she doesn’t have to rush.