On Reading a Book with a Pencil

I love reading. I can tell that I do using a very specific metric. Usually, if there’s something positive and productive I can do with my time, that I may not actually enjoy doing, it’s not something I love. It’s something I love to have done. That distinction has helped delineate the chores from the pastimes I look forward to, one of the latter being reading. That all being said, I don’t read nearly as much as I want to. The reason for this, I am fairly certain, is that there is just a fraction of a higher barrier of entry separating me and reading, than my other hobbies, which are mostly different degrees of staring at my laptop screen.

That is, thankfully, the only hurdle between me and reading. I always travel with books, no matter if reading is something I expect myself to do, because it’s still giving me that option should I choose to. I realised something new, though, fairly recently. Like most things I learn about myself, it’s possible verging on likely that this is a lesson I have already learned and that this is the newest iteration of it, but it is nonetheless refreshingly simple. As someone who absolutely loves having a specific daily routine, it turns out that all I needed to do to be reading on a regular basis was build it into that routine. More than a desire to read, then, it almost becomes a compulsion.

That’s all well and good, but not what I’m here to talk about today. The equally or more important revelation is how much I have come to enjoy and value reading with a pencil in hand. I’m only on my second book of having done this, but have seen my reading experience improve greatly with this change. Firstly, it feels remarkably meaningful to be able to flip through the pages of a book and see what I underlined – what I thought was important. I know I haven’t been doing it long enough, but I’m also really looking forward to rereading one of these books and connecting with a past experience of it while at the same time creating a new one.

All of that would be more than enough for me to do this, but there’s one more reason I hold in just as high regard. When I’m holding that pencil in my hand, I find myself actually paying attention. It’s been ages since I’ve had to flip back a page and read something my eyes glanced over but didn’t actually comprehend. And the best part about it is that it doesn’t feel effortful. That simple act of looking for something to hold on to, a string of words that actually make me feel something, engages me enough to be evaluating everything I read – to process it, understand it. I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to be reading again regularly, to be enjoying it, and to be taking away meaningful expressions of emotion and thought and reason.