Rediscovering a Love of Reading

 

I used to be a voracious reader. But somehow over the past few years, the number of books I’ve read dwindled. I’m not sure if it had to do with the fact that I stopped visiting the library in person during the pandemic, I was working a contract job that required me to work a lot of nights and weekends, or if I simply got addicted to all the shows the streaming services offered me at the touch of a simple remote. It’s also difficult for me to read a lot while I’m working on a large creative project and in the last year, I’ve completely revised a young adult novel and began a developmental edit on a suspense thriller. 

But back to books. I have an obsession with buying them. There are stacks and stacks of books lying all over my house. I just spent less time reading. I remedied that this past year by discovering an app called Libby that my library uses, and I can “check” out books for my Kindle and Audiobooks through the app for free. Since I listen to podcasts constantly, I told myself I could also use that time to listen to audiobooks. That won’t interfere with my “creative writing” time. In the past few months alone, I’ve read or listened to at least five novels, and I’ve taken something valuable away from each one of them, such as: 

"The Last to Vanish" by Megan Miranda. This is a suspense/thriller, but I found the pacing to be slow in the beginning and had a hard time getting into it (I read other reviews that said the same thing). I pushed through and took notes on how the author dropped “clues” to the mystery throughout the way, how she used setting to create a sense of foreboding, and how she structured the novel by introducing the missing people in backwards chronological order (several people have disappeared from a mountain town over the course of several years). 

"The House in the Pines" by Ana Reyes. The first pages of this book are some of the most captivating I’ve read in a long time. I’ll admit when I first started reading this and saw the protagonist suffered from sleep issues, I was frustrated. My current protagonist also has insomnia and it’s a common trope in thrillers. But the more I read the book and figured out Maya had repressed memories, the sleep issues and addiction to anti-anxiety medication made sense. The flashback scenes are written in present tense, while present-day scenes are in past sense, and I feel this was an effective way to structure the novel without making it confusing. 

"Twenties Girl" by Sophie Kinsella. I first read about this book in “Save the Cat Writes a Novel” by Jessica Brody because it’s considered to be an “Out of the Bottle” story that uses magic or wishful thinking to tell a story. I love this genre and had so much fun reading about a British young woman named Lara who is haunted by the fun-loving ghost of her great-aunt Sadie, who appears to her as a 1920s flapper. This book helped me study the “rules” that must be put into place to keep a novel like this consistent (why can only Lara see her aunt? How does Sadie convince people to do things they might not normally do?) 

"Hello, Sunshine" by Laura Dave. I haven’t read her most recent release that’s now a series on Apple TV (The Last Thing He Told Me), but I saw this available in audiobook through Libby and decided to check it out. It felt like a cross between a book club selection, romance, and light Hallmark movie. I was interested to read about a cooking “influencer” whose world came crashing down when her fraud was exposed since I’m writing a similar storyline in my current novel. I also enjoyed the foodie details and descriptions of Montauk, Long Island in New York. 

Most recently, I read Elin Hilderbrand’s latest summer novel “The Five Star Weekend” and finished it in two days, although there were a few things I disagreed with in the plot (no spoilers!). I’m not onto “Daisy Jones and the Six” by Taylor Jenkins Reid since I watched the series on Amazon Prime and loved it. I’m embracing my rediscovered love of reading and have been surprised by how much joy these books have brought me. 

I’d love to hear about any good books you’ve recently discovered!

Renee Roberson is an award-winning writer who also produces the true crime podcast, Missing in the Carolinas. 

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