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  • Do You Enjoy Reading?

    Posted by deann-r on October 6, 2020 at 10:00 am

    While reading Michael Casten’s recent column, it got me thinking about my own relationship with reading. His daughter, Ella, is showing interest in books. Like my mom, Michael is supportive as reading sparks thought and creativity. Although I enjoy reading, holding a book is difficult for me. Of course for me at Ella’s age digital content was nonexistent. Because reading was physically a hassle, I mostly just read the required books. Most content is available digitally so I should read more.
    It’s tough to get back into it though. Especially because I don’t really know what I enjoy reading. I don’t want to waste my time if it’s not something I care for. What’s been your relationship with reading? Is it physically challenging for you? Any must read selections? A couple that I’ve enjoyed somewhat recently are The Host by Stephanie Meyer along with the Flowers in the Attic series.

    lisa replied 4 years, 1 month ago 7 Members · 7 Replies
  • 7 Replies
  • kip-troendle

    Member
    October 6, 2020 at 10:33 am

    I agree!  When I was younger, I had just enough strength to pick up a smaller book, and burry my nostrils into the pages!  Oh that new smell, I loved it so!  Now, I let Alexa read to me.  Problem is, I just can’t seem to find anything interesting.

  • alyssa-silva

    Member
    October 6, 2020 at 3:07 pm

    one of the things I miss most throughout the years of my SMA progression is being able to hold a physical book. Like Kip said, that new book smell— the BEST. Now I read everything on the kindle app on my phone. I try to read a book a month and just finished The Pretty One by Keah Brown. It’s a memoir on her life with CP, but reading her story as a disabled woman I found many similarities to my own life. I highly recommend it.

  • jennifer-perkins

    Member
    October 7, 2020 at 7:27 am

    I just recently got into reading.  I use to HATE it.

    I can hold a physical book but i get worn out after so many pages.  I find laying the book on a table helps a lot.  A book that my husband and I really enjoyed was “Fractured Not Broken”, about a women that was paralyzed.  I also really like crime novels.

  • kevin-schaefer

    Member
    October 7, 2020 at 10:44 am

    I wrote a column a while back about how it’s become more difficult for me to read physical books, but I still do so as much as possible. You can read it here.

    These days, I read what I can in physical form, and then I read a lot digitally. I’m currently about halfway through a Paul Simon biography, which I’m reading with an SMA friend. And Alyssa, I loved “The Pretty One” as well! I wrote about it here. Brie wrote a column on it as well.

  • ari-anderson

    Member
    October 7, 2020 at 10:47 am

    Although I was never able to hold a book, I had these book holders in school that would attach to my chair. They would work fine for a while until they fell and broke, which seemed to happen a lot for various reasons. I was in school more than a decade ago so there are probably better book holders now.

    There are plenty of bad things about the year 2020, but one of the great things is that we live in the age of audiobooks! There are few novels out there that haven’t been recorded into audiobooks, believe me I should know after all the time I spend on audible!????

    For people in school using textbooks, no doubt there are ways to get them converted into audiobooks as well in this day in age. Has anybody here done that?

  • deann-r

    Member
    October 7, 2020 at 8:55 pm

    Love all the input! Keep it coming.

  • lisa

    Member
    October 8, 2020 at 9:02 am

    I usually also do audiobooks- especially on a slow pace- i really enjoy that i can set the pace of the reader. It helps me immensely to be able to contextualise the reading and the reading speed to the kind of day I have had. Currently reading / working with an interesting statistics book called Statistics for People Who (Think They) Hate Statistics- it is really fun- i am also doing a sandman reading- overall lovely but these two weeks have been more exhausting so less reading

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