Reading My Vegetables

I love to read.  I always have.  I think this is a very good thing, and I see that Justin's and my love of reading is rubbing off on Elias, which is also a very good thing.  However, I have a weakness in my appetite for reading, and that is that I love to read fiction and I'm just not so good at getting through nonfiction.  I recognize that there is value in nonfiction, but I just don't have the discipline to make myself read it.  I'll start a book and get through a couple chapters, but then just stall and not read another page even if the first few chapters were really good!  I'll just pick up a fiction book and read my merry way along, leaving the bookmark in the middle of the nonfiction book.  You may even remember that last year one of my resolutions involved reading more nonfiction.  Yeah, that didn't happen.  But all year long I recognized it as something I wanted to do.  I just didn't have a plan.

So a few weeks ago I was talking with my friend Ashley about this subject, and she has encountered the same flaw in her reading life.  So she suggested a plan that I really like!  So per her suggestion, I'm requiring myself to read a chapter of nonfiction a day before I'm allowed to read any fiction.  You may recall that I'm not making any resolutions this year, but it just happened that I started doing this on January 1.  Pure coincidence, I assure you.  But it's working very well so far!  Some days I don't get my chapter read, and so I don't read any fiction at all.  Other days I bang out my chapter before lunch and I'm good to go the rest of the day.

When I told Justin about my plan, he said it sounded like somebody making their kid eat their vegetables before they're allowed to have any dessert.  And I think that's an excellent metaphor!  My sweet tooth would love to eat nothing but ice cream all the time, but I recognize that my nutrition would be incomplete without vegetables and other healthy foods, so I make myself eat those.  Then if I'm still hungry, I can have some dessert.  What I often find, though, is that the healthy foods satisfy me and I no longer need dessert...  And ya know, it may be that the same thing is happening with reading!  Already I'm not "craving" as much fiction, and I'm content to just sit down and read whatever nonfiction book I'm working on.  I actually borrowed a Karen Kingsbury (my favorite Christian author - seriously, you should read ALL her books!) book from the library over a week ago, and I haven't even started it yet!  What the heck?!  I'm going to have to make myself read it before it's due!  Ha!  Who would've ever thought that would be the case?!  Not me, that's for sure.

So anyways, I'm going to be reading a lot more nonfiction this year, and if they're good ones, I'll be writing reviews on my blog.  In fact, I already finished one that was completely awesome, so keep your eyes open for that in the next few days.  Good stuff here, folks.