Columns

SWASING | The Novelty of Reading for Pleasure

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When I’m asked about my hobbies, I often respond that I enjoy reading (which is true, for the record). Then when the inevitable question, “What’s the last good book you read?” follows, my mind goes blank; the titles of every book I’ve ever read disappear into thin air. It disappoints me that the last time I had time to read a good book was so long ago that I can’t even remember what book it was. My pile of “to be read” books grows larger by the day, while my “finished reading” list remains stagnant. 

Reading for pleasure while in college is a topic that has been discussed again, and again and again by Sun columnists. As students pursuing a vast array of academically intense interests, many of us find that we spend so much time on reading assignments and other mentally taxing work that by the time we get a chance to relax, reading for fun sounds like a hill we can’t even begin to climb. Instead, we opt for a mind-numbing Netflix show that we can watch passively while we disengage our brains and scroll through social media.

Arts & Culture

How to Fall Back in Love With Reading, From a Deadbeat Reader

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In recent months, I think I’ve cracked it. I can actually read without it feeling like I have to conduct some Pavlovian experiment on myself every time I open my book. In the spirit of dumb old Valentine’s Day, I will share some of my tips to fall back in love with reading. 

Columns

BERNSTEIN | The True Mystery of Z. K. Goat and Ithaca: The Novel

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It’s about the Odyssey’s Penelope and Odysseus: They’re vacationing for the Summer from the underworld, and instead of going home to Ithaca, Greece, they decide to visit Ithaca, New York. How quirky! They stay at Argos Inn in Room 214. On page 2, Penelope heads out to go work on her poems, which she does every day. “The fifteenth of August,” she thinks. “Our time here is almost done.” 

Arts & Culture

Curating a Summer Reading List

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If you, like me, are looking forward to some reading this summer, let’s embark on this ill-fated journey together. Will we achieve our reading goals? Almost certainly not. Will we still enjoy the act of resistance that is leisure in a society that values only productivity? We must — or perish.

Arts & Culture

LU | Exhaustion, 4 Exhibitions and Pleasure Reading

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Spring semesters have always had a rapid cadence but this year, March slipped straight to May and April was an immaterial haze. Perhaps my April was also marked by the exhaustion of four nearly back-to-back exhibitions in the Johnson Museum.

books

YAO | Read All About It

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Back in ye olden days, I spent my afternoons maxing out the book limit at my local library and my evenings traveling to Oz or Narnia for hours at a time. The table by my bed perpetually labored under a precarious stack of novels that always seemed to grow higher. But soon enough, that library card spent more and more time inside some drawer or another before I eventually misplaced it. My nightstand heaved a sigh of relief as the pile of books dwindled to nothing. 

Somewhere between sixth-grade’s The Giver (which I enjoyed) and twelfth-grade’s Hamlet (which I skimmed before the exam), I put down leisure reading for good. There was no more time for such things, I reasoned.