One More Chapter
When I made my 2025 self-care to-do list, I thought reading (at least) six books in one year would be the most difficult goal to accomplish. After working all day, my brain can’t concentrate on the most pedestrian of tasks or find the motivation to simply load the dishwasher correctly, let alone immerse itself in a intricately detailed story. I am a sloth, a dawdling creature putting off all responsibility. My only ambition is to crawl underneath the comfy-cozy warmth of my bed-sheets and sleep for days. On the weekend? I fight my listless instincts and become a woman of purpose and success, for a little while at least. Errands and chores are completed within the early morning hours, objectives are checked off the list one by one. Until . . . CRASH! It’s all over. I’m done and back to my original, sluggish form. The strain, to even attempt to focus on reading a few, short chapters is remarkable and undeniably insurmountable. So when would this single, introverted dog mom find the time to read more than just her daily dose of fan-fiction?
Fan-fiction is usually digested in small, palatable pieces. Works that are fully finished are rare to find, as frustrating as that is. Reading fan-fiction daily is the best guilty pleasure due to the authors’ to-the-point writing style and irresistibly recognizable characters.
As much as I hate to make this mundane assessment (believe me, I was never this way until I became older, wiser, and tired), books are – in the very simplest of terms – long. Sometimes it takes two-hundred or four-hundred pages for it to find its true footing. If you aren’t immediately enticed by the characters’ adorable eccentricities or bold and brash mannerisms, then reading page after page can become tedious and labor-intensive. For those of us who are forced to schedule activities down to the minute, reading a good book becomes the last thing you want to do when you get home.
Over the years, my serious addiction to buying books has become a healthy aversion to reading them. You could say that I collect books the same way the Avengers collect beguiling misfits. I usually meet them one or two at at time, frequently and with ease. Once they are welcomed into the fold, they just sit, and wait for years and years until they’re finally called into nimble battle. It’s a huge problem, I know. Let’s face it, Kevin Feige has nothing on me.
The last count of my TBR list was at fifty-two, I think. During the holidays, I added eleven more books to that heap. Eleven. Seriously, it was one of my proudest and happiest times of my life. The instant serotonin boost I got left me reeling for days. My compulsion – and my pocketbook – had never been stretched so thoroughly and so far.
As soon as I brought them home that first night, I opened the beautifully designed cover of one of my newest purchases and experienced that most glorious feeling. You know the one, it’s the feeling you used to get leading up to and during every Scholastic Book Fair. It was a moment that I never wanted to end.
I guess I must have buried those my memories deep in the dark woodlands of my mind (that’s a reoccurring theme, lately). I must have forgotten what it’s like to touch crisp, white pages and to propel myself into a unfamiliar story. I have for too long overlooked fan-fiction’s inability to compare to the ostentatious world-creating, extraordinary character building, and overall awesomeness of an actual hardcover or paperback book. My time avoiding them is over.
I’ve already read two moderately sized and one very long book since my initial rediscovery, and have just started a fourth. I still have a small hill to climb, of course, before I can really celebrate. But knowing how easy it was, to begin this goal in the first place despite my fears and overall negativeness, gives me hope that I can accomplish even more than that. I’m so glad my stubbornness to not fail at my first stage of self-imposed self-care was a resounding success. Let’s keep this momentum going!
Quick Reviews
The Village Library Demon Hunting Society
I’m not sure if the demon aspect of this book was actually needed, but I thoroughly enjoyed the unreliable characters and the ever-evolving mystery.
The “enemies to lovers” trope is strong with this one, but I’m a sucker for magic and women staring longingly at one another until rose-colored hearts pop out from their eye sockets, and they finally confess their undying love for each other.
It took me a quick minute to fully get into this story. And it took even longer to correctly match each of the multitudinous characters to their story arcs, but this unpredictable, thrilling, and heart-wrenching saga is not to be missed. Ready to drop the second and third installments straight into my basket.
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Kim the FanGirl 