Now that I’m not working anymore, I have so much time in the day that is spent doing pretty much nothing at all.

I have days where I plan for golfing, French studies, going for long walks, house work and helping my parents with their errands too. However there are other days where nothing is planned. Given that we are on the one wage now, I also count my pennies so that I don’t spend them on frivolous things I really don’t need. (I’m sad to say that I haven’t bought any yarn for a long while. Also can’t remember the last time I bought clothes).

Also this time has meant that I’ve been reading a lot more and staying home. There are days where I just don’t get out of my pyjamas spending them entirely in bed with a stack of books on my bedside table that I work my way through.

Friday was one of those days.

I had started reading The Seven Moons, the new Booker Prizewinner in the last week however, it made me lose my reading mojo. Unfortunately as much as I tried, I couldn’t get into the story and as a result, impacted me reading anything else. When I read a book I can’t get into, I lose my mojo, and then it takes a while for me to get back into the rhythm.

I started to read Diana Reid’s Seeing Other People (unbeknownst to me it was an LGBTQI love story) which I won in a writing competition and it had some promise. However, as I continued reading it, that promise started to crumble to the point where I was struggling to read it. I felt myself getting into a reading slump once again. I couldn’t not continue reading the book, I thought to myself.

How many books must I stop reading halfway?

My husband saw my disappointment and he asked why.

I told him that I think that I simply don’t prefer to read modern books or writing from current or debut writers. That maybe, I just don’t like reading about current circumstances, contexts, environments and situations?

I also don’t care for romances (whether they’re straight or not). Nor do I care about reading of the lives of 20-somethings having existential crises if they see certain posts from their friends on Instagram or TikTok. Or how they want to be an influencer on social media as the culmination of all that is good in their lives. It’s vacuous and superficial. Also, I don’t want to be lectured to by these characters in these books about cancel culture, MeToo, race, privilege or sexuality.

I hear enough of that stuff in normal every day life, I don’t want to read it in novels UNLESS these themes and their stories are written in such a way that makes me reflect, ponder and understand my own actions through the character’s dilemmas – as opposed to feel lectured at. Or feeling as if the themes had been casually thrown into the story because it sells more books.

However as I was saying this out loud to my husband, I realised that I could be seen as a “book snob”. I prefer to read about characters who are placed into moral and ethical dilemmas and who grow – or perish – based on the decisions they make. I want to be moved, I want to walk in their shoes and most of all, I want to see myself in them. However I don’t want authors to make these themes…obvious.

Sometimes I find that current popular and generalist fiction authors try and capture a wide readership (for a wider market) by inserting all of today’s modern life themes into their writing to make them relevant for today. The result comes across that readers are lectured to, or the author’s voice or opinions come out through the characters. It makes for a disheartening reading experience when rather than coming away from the book reflective, you feel reprimanded.

Maybe it’s the reason why I prefer to read classics and literary classics. You’re not going to find characters who grapple with life’s big questions by talking about their iPhones and apps. In fact, i struggle to think of classic characters who focus on the relationships with friends, their comic books, books or whatever 20somethings did back then. Their focus was on bigger things like family, poverty, feeding themselves or their family, war, health, death.

I think I’ve reached a saturation point of reading anything post-Internet age – especially of general fiction. If lm reading about a character using their iPhone or social media whingeing about not having as many likes on their Instagram post, I’m reading a book that’s too current for my liking.

Of course not all books are like this but it’s the ones that I cannot read, I’m left to wonder why. It’s either I’m being lectured to OR the writing style is too creative for it’s own good. You can be creative but you better make sure your writing is exceptional. It has to emotionally move the reader. If it doesn’t, it just smacks of trying too hard. Or marketing tactics.

Anyway, I needed to get my mojo back so I reached for Charlotte Brontë’s Jane Eyre and then slowly but surely, I could feel my mojo returning.

In fact, it only took the first chapter to bring some tears to my eyes as a young Jane Eyre enclosed herself in the window seat with the drapes to shield her from others to look out onto the cold frosty English landscape. The image and the writing was enough to well tears into my eyes because i could feel her loneliness and the sadness – and I continued to read. And read. And read.

Just like that, my reading mojo was back.