R3: Reading
Ease: 9/10
Price: $
Is it a hobby?: Yes
Total score: 88 (B+)*
Summary:
Regardless of what you read or how you read (shout out to audiobooks and e-readers!), reading allows for both escape and captivation. It’s easy to pick up at any age, and you can do this with any amount of time constraint or abundance. However, be warned that if you claim reading as a hobby, you will be asked what you are currently reading and you must be prepared to share. Hesitate too long, and others will believe you to be a fraud who opens books only to set their phone in front of it to doomscroll.
Process:
Find something to read.
This can be difficult! What kind of mood am I in? Do I want fiction or non-ficture? Something fun or something miserable? Do online articles count, and if so, how do I get past this paywall?
Read it.
Start to finish if I’m feeling real good! Or maybe I’ll take a peek at the last few pages just to know what I’m getting into. But what if I don’t finish? Hey! It’s about the journey, not the destination.
Find something else to read.
Maybe you are someone who can read multiple things as once (I’m not). Maybe you have a stack of books on your bedside table and you legitimately take time each week to read a bit of all of them. That’s great, but also… I don’t believe you. We all know you add to your To Be Read pile at a much faster pace than you finish books. No shame, but I want to speak truth here. Feel what you need to feel right now.
Personally, I go in and out of reading phases. I’m more often out than in if I’m being honest. That’s what hobbies are for, though: to be there when you need them.
To end, here are a few of my personal favorites if you are ‘in’:
The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene
Clapton: The Autobiography by Eric Clapton
Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity by Kim Scott
And a few of my least favorites, just in case you are interested:
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls
The first two books of The Dark Elf Trilogy, by R. A. Salvatore. Sorry Salvy! Also, I gave up before the third book.
Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
*“Everything's made up and the points don't matter.”