Who are you as a reader? – The Introspection

Have you ever taken an online quiz about “What kind of reader are you?” There are so many out there! Buzzfeed, Playbuzz, Epic Reads… every quiz is telling you something new! Have you ever found questions/options in these quizzes that did not resonate with you at all? Have you found that the quiz result tells you a bit about yourself but you are more than just what it says? Or unlike it, sometimes? I have been trying some out lately. Let’s rewind a bit so that I can give you some context as to why.

My conversation with Helen during the 2019 in books series sparked an interesting chain of ideas. We were discussing the Goodreads Challenge – the quantitativeness of it. In other casual conversations with my friends, Brent and Ariel, we talked about the idea of rating memoirs – can one truly rate another person’s life story? – and what the 5 star system on Goodreads really means. All these discussions led to me and Ariel to work on a system to make more sense of when and why we rate books the way we do. I’ll be sharing more about our findings as we work more on that, but, the first step I believe is to understand the reader before we can develop an understanding of the rating.

I found an academic book about reading at my library, Plotting the Reading Experience: Theory/ Practice/ Politics, and the following exercise to learn more about myself as reader stems from one of the articles in that book. My goal in this post is to give you a list of questions to answer that will help you get to know yourself better, unrestricted by options available in an online quiz. I have answered the questions myself here as an example. This is a free-flow activity if you choose to do it, I assure you, you know the answers to all of the questions in your heart and mind. I find writing helps me uncover new ideas and things I didn’t know before so I highly recommend that you take a pen and paper (or Pencil and iPad) and take some notes.

The questions that I have gathered here come from a variety of sources including the book I mentioned, online fun low-key quizzes I did over the week about ‘What kind of reader are you?’ as well as my own curiosities about the reading experience, with ideas from Ariel. 

I have divided all of them into two parts and this is the first part of the post, covering the introspective questions and ideas. I will start off each part with the questions together, followed by my answers. At the end of the post, you will find a link to a PDF that you can download – it has all the questions I cover in this two part article.

Are you ready to learn more about who you are as a reader?

And a bit about me too! 🙂

The Introspective Questions

There is so much in the act of reading which doesn’t have anything to do with the book itself. In this section, I want to dive into the aspects of reading which are personal to us. What developed me to be the reader I am today? How do I  approach reading and how have I evolved over time as a reader?The following are questions that relate to this broader theme. These are just starter questions and there are definitely more out there! If you think of some, please comment below. 

In my paternal grandparents home, there were floor-to-ceiling shelves, housing Archie comics, Barbara Cartland, Agatha Christie, Enid Blyton, and in my years of visiting that house, the collection also started to include Georgette Heyer. During my childhood, most of the books that I read belonged to Papa and my aunt, I remember the yellow pages of the Secret Seven series and The Naughtiest Girl, in particular. I started my own collection of Famous Five books, though I am not sure I ever completed it, maybe 2 were left in the series.

My mom’s side of the family didn’t have an affinity for reading – theirs was more of an aversion and anytime they saw me reading books (which was often because I grew up living with them), I was asked if I had anything better to do. Thankfully, Papa and his side of the family showered me with books and, ultimately, my mom gave in, and I am happy to say we share books now and then.

From my teenage years in school, I remember reading Jane Eyre multiple times, out aloud to my classmates, and to myself. At the beginning of the school year, I looked forward to my literature books the most and usually managed to finish them during my summer vacations (in India, summer vacation is after a month and a half into the school year, rather than before the next year begins like in North America). When I finished school and my university courses were limited to Math and Computing Science, I fell in love with reading all over again. Looking back now, the one summer when I read 50 books makes sense now because I wasn’t reading for school at all. I was completely reading for pleasure and discovering new challenges and stories.

Anyone got their Jane Eyre copies handy? #SundayLitChat

I’ve two. The one on the left was gifted to me in 2006 and is well reread. The one of the left is my new copy from this year.@DBCarterAuthor @SJLomasAuthor https://t.co/IPzNlXXSfl pic.twitter.com/OsOciskVqb

— Kriti Khare (@_armedwithabook) November 10, 2019

It was last year when I finally took university courses in literature that I found a new way to enjoy reading. I had been reading for years but never thought about writing after the summer. I had not thought about the themes that books represent and my comparative literature professors were amazing teachers in helping me identify and flesh out the messages that the authors were sharing through their words. That’s when I started to highlight and take notes while reading. I have books full of sticky notes and it is these very books that I fill with my thoughts that I want to go to back and read again.

As I was designing my website’s author facing pages, I started to articulate why I read. What pleasure do books bring that other activities do not? Books take me to new places and I get the opportunity to learn from the life and experiences of the characters. I think this quote by Louis L’Amour, an American novelist, says it best:

Once you have read a book you care about, some part of it is always with you.

Louis L’Amour

Through book blogging, I am collecting all these parts together. But how does one find the time to reread books that I care about when there are so many books out there to read? Since getting into book blogging, this question comes back to me every now and then. In 2019 alone, I have accumulated over 90 books, self bought and gifts. That does not include the 30+ books in ARCs and books obtained as part of blog tours. 

My bookshelf is composed mostly of unread books and books I want to reread. Someone looking at it will find non-fiction books about Chernobyl, space exploration, productivity and mindfulness, as well as fantasy and science fiction books like Dark Matter and Game of Thrones. There are a number of literary fiction books, a whole shelf dedicated to books from publishers and authors, some of them signed copies. But you would really need to pick out the books to know that. 🙂

I read a couple books at a time and usually have a very good idea which ones I will be reading in the next month or so. That is why if any of my family and friends show an interest in a book (like Clinton’s dad did for The Ventriloquist that I got for my birthday), I lend the book out even before I read it myself. Like I said, I can only read so much. There are not many people in my family who read as much as I do – which is probably a good thing because I honestly like being the source of books. But the downside to that is that I hardly have anyone to share my love for books and reading – I am trying to cultivate a love for books in my brother, but we are 16 years apart so it will be a couple years before we can chat eloquently! The book blogging community has helped me connect with readers around the world and I feel better every day as I talk to Ariel, Pam, Evelina, Noly, among other friends.

I wish I could keep my books forever. But alas, due to space and time (we all outgrow books as much as we don’t want to admit it), I donate books at least twice a year. That is easy (as easy as it can be) to do with physical books but digital copies are an altogether different beast that I have not learned to tackle yet.

I was never a huge fan of the ebooks but things changed this year. The reviewer copies from Netgalley and BookSirens are mobi or PDF and I found a new use for my iPad. Realizing that I could take notes and highlight as I read enhanced the experience even more. Flipping through physical books to find the line I may be  thinking about is such a task – I do not have a photographic memory and if I did, would I still do as many mark-ups? 🤔

The Kindle app and my GoodNotes app with their text and handwriting searchability have helped me tons. Since I only have so much space in my little apartment, buying ebooks has expanded my collection many folds, though I am sure I bought as many hard copies of books this year – force of habit. 🙂 Do I read audiobooks? I absolutely do and often end up buying the text copy of the book if I love it – another way of finding the books I will reread. 

In any case, I am happy to curl in a blanket on my couch with my book or my iPad with my Fiona purring at my feet. That’s when the best reading happens!

Introspective questions take a while to answer, don’t they? I will post about the next and final category – About Preferences and Expectations tomorrow. Meantime, try out the above. Please do share your thoughts and answers when you do this exercise yourself. I really hope you will find this as valuable as I did.