The Ledger

By Becky Holland

Apparently, 87 percent of American adults say reading three pages a day feels realistic.

Three pages.

Not three chapters. Not 50 pages before breakfast. Three.

According to a national survey of 2,006 adults conducted by Atomik Research for ThriftBooks, 57 percent said starting is the biggest challenge to reading, while 34 percent blamed distractions.

I understand both.

I also understand something else: somewhere along the way, we have made reading more complicated than it needs to be.

There are lists of books we are supposedly supposed to read before we die. There are classics we are supposed to appreciate, new releases everybody else seems to have already finished and enormous fantasy series that require maps, glossaries and possibly a small notebook.

Meanwhile, sometimes I just want to read about two people falling in love.

Or wander around Mitford with Jan Karon.

Or read something by Fredrik Backman that makes me laugh on one page and stare quietly at the wall after the next.

I love books. Really love them.

I love bookstores, used-book rooms and Little Free Libraries. I love finding a book I wasn’t looking for. I love the anticipation of deciding what comes next. I even love looking at my unread books and imagining the stories waiting inside them.

And yes, sometimes I spend far too much time deciding what to read instead of actually reading.

That’s the funny part.

We can turn even something we love into another task to accomplish.

How many books have you read this year? What’s your reading goal? Are you reading something important? Is it literary enough? Is romance “real” reading? Do audiobooks count?

Maybe we are asking the wrong questions.

Did you enjoy it?

Did it make you think?

Did it make you laugh?

Did you recognize yourself somewhere in those pages?

Did it give you somewhere to go for an hour when the real world felt especially heavy?

Then it counted.

Reading doesn’t have to mean sitting down for two uninterrupted hours with a leather-bound classic. Read three pages before bed. Read while you drink your coffee. Read a paperback with a ridiculous cover. Read a mystery, a romance, a biography, a devotional, a children’s book you loved 40 years ago or the novel everybody else thinks is silly.

There is no prize for reading the “right” books.

The wonderful thing about books is that somewhere among millions of them is one written for exactly the reader you are right now.

You just have to open it.

Even if you only read three pages.