Bad Reading Habits

I ran into this topic a while back on Book Blogs. After answering the question and reading through quite a few other comments I thought it worth the while to write a post on.

…Hi. My name is RYCJ and I have a bad reading habit. I close books very quickly, usually by page 50 or somewhere thereabout, if the book is doing nothing good for my mood. I do not like this habit for the prime case of what just happened. I just finished a book where I went from being very close to conceding to no one other than myself I wouldn't finish the book, to shouting to the top of my lungs, this is one of my top ten favorite reads this year!!!

So you see, this is why this is not a very good habit. It's like the child who turns up his or her nose to that white stuff, because he or she has never drank milk from a carton. (You know this used to be my siblings and I. Our parents for the longest only fed us milk out of a can). Or, how about the girl who didn't like living in a certain state because the people acted different? They were too friendly. This was me too. Turned out I loved living in California. Once I got used to it, about a year after moving there, it turned out to be a phenomenal experience.

What I'm saying here is, I need to give the book a chance. I could be shortchanging myself. I could be missing out on an experience that could be the best thing in the world that happened to me.

Listed Below, 'Other' General Very Bad Reading Habits

→ Rushing through a book, or speed reading. This really isn't even fine for trying to pass an exam. I mean, it really might be not too comforting to overhear a doctor bragging about how he, or she winged exams speed reading through medical books.

→ I'm going to say reading while eating is a pretty bad habit too, and this is one I do. Using books as a (so-to-speak) placemat, especially when I like my books left in pristine condition so that I can showcase them in my library, has got to be pretty bad. Ketchup splatters, grapefruit spills, and cookie crumbs just shouldn't be inside the book unless it's typed on a page.

→ Throwing a book across the room. Now, a while back I thought this one was pretty funny. I may have even laughed out loud. But then I pictured it. And then pictured a grown man or woman doing this. It looks like a two-year old temper tantrum bad reading habit.

→ Reading while driving. I should't have to type any more. It's worse than talking on the phone, texting, and jumping in the back seat to straighten out a misbehaving child all combined! Don't do it.

→ Writing in books to annotate sections you want to remember when you’ve finished reading. I like to do this when I'm reading material where I plan to substantiate my opinions about the book. But going back to my reasoning in my number two, I've found that post-it notes and stickies, or bookmarks work better.

→ Worse than speed reading, as I've heard there is a method to speed reading that allows a readers to grasp the core concept of the material, but willfully and blatantly skipping words, and then sentences, and whole pages I can’t in all good common understanding of reading, call this reading. You may as well have gone deep sea diving, or boogie board riding, or washed the dishes or done anything where you either did or you didn't. I don't know what to call skimming books other than you did not read the book. The worst habit of them all.