I kicked off my summer one day early last semester. The day before my Math 212 final, I went outside and opened a book. It wasn’t a math textbook, though. It was L. M. Montgomery’s "Anne of Green Gables."
Nine hours of reading got me through to the last page. What Joy it brought me! Satisfaction wrapped me like a warm blanket. After a year of reading next to no books outside of school, this accomplishment felt like a breath of fresh air.
So, after school ended in May and I returned home, all enthusiastic, I embarked on a quest to read as much as I could this summer.
You see, I come from a family of readers. My dad reads most of all, devouring literature as fast as he does pickles; my mom savors books more slowly and my sister Linda had just published her first book as part of her high school’s creative writing program earlier in the spring.
On paper, there should be no reason why I should not be an avid reader too. But my journey towards appreciating books is a little more rocky than that.
In middle school, I read little besides mystery novels — all of Agatha Christie’s Poirot mysteries, among others — but that’s not to say I read little. I often got myself into ruts, where I finished one book every evening of the week. But as I grew up, I started to view these books as childish. That’s when I stopped reading altogether.
Fast forward to the latter part of my senior year of high school, when classes started to slack off — or rather, I was starting to slack off — and I had to find something fun to fill my school days. One at a time, my literature teacher lent me every book on his bookshelf. The more I read, the more I started to like reading. It became so part of my routine that soon, I couldn’t live without it.
But freshman year of college threw men off the tracks again. With demanding classes, clubs and friends to think about, I once again pushed reading to the back burner. By the time finals week rolled around, I needed another reading-recovery period desperately. This past summer was exactly that — I happily fell back into the rabbit hole.
Each time that I take up reading again after a dry spell is similar: I go back to my beloved mystery novels. I’ve realized that I have to start with easy, enjoyable books to get back into the rhythm, to convince myself that I do like reading, after all.
As growing adults, we let go of good habits easily. After a week of morning runs, we happily push off the next day of training until six months later. During the first week of classes, our class notes could be framed — they’re so neat. Towards the end of the semester, they’re barely legible — if they exist at all. On our third day carrying our water bottle that has motivational hydration markers, we barely get past “Good Morning.” The next day we leave it at home.
Few of us have kept up the daily 30 minutes of independent reading since middle school. And no wonder. There’s no surefire way of letting go of the habit of reading than forcibly plowing through a book you don’t like.
The problem is that young people immediately become discouraged after opening a bad book — become convinced that they unfortunately just don’t enjoy reading. Instead of trying again, this is often accepted as a fact, a personality trait, and not questioned again until late adulthood.
Duke students are no exception. As much as we celebrate self-improvement at our school, we don’t read half as much as we should, given the benefits it brings us. Perhaps, this is entirely due to a misunderstanding.
I won’t blow your mind by saying that the student population here at Duke is, on average, fairly ambitious. We take classes we feel unprepared for, start researching as freshmen and are part of more clubs than there are days in the week. We dream big.
Naturally, when we pick up a book, we don’t want it to be any old book. We want to read big. We want to limit our candidates to only lengthy manuscripts in tedious Old English. All the better if they’re a well-known classic. But we’re only human — we get stuck after the fourth page.
It’s no wonder that picking up Tolstoy after several unscholarly months creates friction. In today’s age of technology, when our brains are used to being overstimulated and our attention spans average a few seconds, committing to reading word after word on a black-and-white page can feel daunting. The best way to break down that wall of resistance is to do the very thing that feels wrong: read an easier book.
And I’m not talking about merely shifting from Shakespeare to Virginia Woolf. I mean a much easier book.
There seems to be a widely unquestioned misconception that one should always read at or above their reading level. While this can be empowering for third-grade readers, I feel that for adults who last picked up a book in February, this restriction no longer applies.
There are a couple of reasons for that.
First and foremost, no matter how simple a book may be, it will always require more intellect than scrolling through TikTok. Even books of a low reading level can teach us something. I was surprised to find that Agatha Christie’s Poirot mysteries lie somewhere between the 6th and 10th grade levels. Granted, my mother tongue is not English, but I learn a new word or expression from these novels every other page.
Like all things, reading skills are built from the bottom up. Not only will reading simpler books help brush up some cognitive skills, but it will also improve imagination, memory, stress, empathy and sleep, to name a few. These benefits aren’t singular to big, lengthy, intellectually challenging novels.
Importantly, as a habit of reading is formed, pulp fiction or “silly” mystery novels will no longer satisfy a highly intellectual mind. In other words, we need not fear being “dumbed down” by simple books.
I admit that finding a book that makes one’s heart sing is no easy task. When we’re not used to reading, this is even harder — with 87 genres to pick from and critics using words like “satiric,” “insightful” and “prolific” in every blurb, we’re lost in indecision. Perhaps, finding an enjoyable book — a sure-safe title that is easy to read — is a good starting point.
At the end of the day, there’s a clear answer between choosing whether to read below your level or not at all.
And think about this: there’s no harm in trying. If even Agatha Christie fails to convince you that reading is more fulfilling than scrolling, then you may immediately go back to your phone, knowing in your heart that, intellectually speaking, you cannot be worse off than before.
Anna Garziera is a Trinity sophomore. Her pieces typically run on alternate Tuesdays.
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