Have you tried audiobooks? If you have trouble finding time to read, you should!
In my teens and early 20s I was a consistent reader. While I was in school I bought a Kobo that I used for two hours a day on public transit and I loved it. There was no cell reception, I could lose myself in a book and, as an added bonus, people generally left me alone.
What happened? I graduated and got a job. In my new way of life I had to make time to read. Between the rush hour driving, the excitement of a new job, and enjoying my life with grown-up money, I did not prioritize reading. Fast forward a few years and I had a child. Now I really didn't have time. By 2020 I hadn't read a book in years!
I was always intrigued by audiobooks, however, as a cheap 20-something (yes, I admit it), I didn't like that I had to pay for them without any guarantee that I would enjoy the medium. I never gave them a chance.
Lucky for me, in 2020 a close friend introduced me to the app Libby. Libby offers a service that let's you borrow audiobooks from your local library system for free! All you need is a library card. You may have to join a waitlist for a book, but you can join 30 at once. I always have a book ready for me.
I don't know if the words life changing are too dramatic, but this is the one of the best additions I've made to my life. Without thinking about it, I enjoyed 13 books in the second half of 2020. That's more than two books a month. So far in 2021, I'm averaging one book a week easily. I'm going to stress on the easily because I'm a full-time working from home mother with shared custody of a 4-year old in virtual school.
I hesitate to say I've read these books because the experience is different from reading. The narrator takes away much of the interpretation of dialogue and you have no idea how anything is spelt. If I experienced Harry Potter as audiobooks, I never would have enjoyed trying to figure out how to say Hermione. You also do not have the benefit of flipping back to a previous chapter for a clarification. Despite these variances from reading, I still feel that I could participate in a book club.
On the other hand, there are benefits to this medium that you cannot get from reading. I recently finished Talking to Strangers by Malcolm Gladwell. This is a non-fiction book about how we make sense of people we don't know with references to historical events and news stories. Throughout the audiobook, which also included some great music, the author played audio from actual footage of news stories, courtrooms and interviews rather than reading them from his book. This greatly added to the enjoyment of the book.
The best benefit of audiobooks, in my opinion, is that they allow me to multitask. I don't need to find time. I can enjoy a book while cooking, cleaning, driving, or, one of my favourite pandemic hobbies, completing a paint-by-numbers. You can experience them without any additional effort while accomplishing other tasks. Chores or waiting for a grocery pickup do not seem as daunting or boring when I get to listen to a book while doing so.
If you miss reading, I highly recommend giving audiobooks a try. I recently started reading a book that I'm enjoying so much (The Power of Showing Up by By Daniel J. Siegel and Tina Payne Bryson), that I've decided to purchase a physical copy of the book for reference later. Fortunately for me, I'm getting a free preview of the entire book first.