I don't read books. I can read them...obviously, and used to devour them when I was a kid, but I've only read a handful of books in my entire adult life. My attention span with books is the problem. I get stuck like a scratched record, and end up reading the same paragraph a dozen times before it actually sinks in and I can move on...until the next time. The problem is, unlike the books I loved as a kid, the ‘grown up’ books don’t have pictures.
I'm told, especially considering my own job, I should have the imagination to make up my own pictures. But that is actually the problem - I spend way too long doing just that, and my mind wanders far from where it should be in the book. It was actually a lot easier when you saw pictures of Mrs Pepperpot, or the Famous Five, and you then knew what they looked like. It's fixed…job done – you know what they look like, and there's less visualising work to do. I had a Kindle for a while, and enjoyed reading short stories on it, but anything more than about ten pages was a test of endurance I failed every time.
Of that handful of books that I have managed to finish, two of them I've actually read twice! 'To Kill A Mocking Bird' was one – saw the movie first (brilliant!), then read the book (even better!). And a book called 'Illusions - The Adventures Of A Reluctant Messiah' by Richard Bach (who also wrote Jonathan Livingstone Seagull...which I've not read). It was a book that convinced me I could fly when I first read it several decades ago as a young man (I never succeeded, oddly enough), but was a bit of a disappointment when I reread it a few years back. I think that obviously says more about my encroaching cynicism through advancing years than the author's inspirational skills.
I still hope to fly some day, though I’ll settle for a little levitation.
