So I've got a bit of free time, if there is such a beast, and I'm trying to catch up on my To Be Read Pile o' Doom.  It's been kind of bugging me, how behind I've gotten.  I've always been an enormous reader, and of late. . . not so much. 

Part of it can be blamed on writing: writing takes up reading time, writing makes me crazy editor on other people's books, writing makes my eyes hurt until I want to pull them out of my head and find a hobby that just doesn't require them.

But, I think most of all?  Reading is not a multi-tasking event.  And this is a multi-tasking world.  In high school, college, etc, I used to grab a stack of books, and hurl myself into the comfy chair, sprawl on the bed, the floor, wherever there was light and space, and go for it.  Now, unless the book is wildly hard to put down, I can't help myself.  I think about what I should be doing, what I need to do, what I could be doing.  I try to do other things while reading, and really--the only thing you can do with any degree of success while reading, is eat. 

On the other hand, while watching TV, you can successfully, do your laundry folding, check email, check newsfeeds, play with the cats, make dinner, talk on the telephone (if I'm being terribly rude to the caller), even hit the treadmill.  Reading doesn't allow for any of that without disruption.  Writing, oddly, does.  I'm a fit and spurt writer, a hundred words here--flee the desk--a hundred words there--flee the desk.  Things get done all around me.

But you know?  I really miss reading.  I learned to set aside writing time; maybe I need to set aside reading time.  I can steal time here and there, but it's just not the same experience at all.  I miss the immersive days, where my body might as well have been a carcass while I read.  Nothing distracting me, nothing disrupting me, and if I got up at all, it was with the book glued to my face.  (Yes, I was that reader.  The one who wandered school hallways with a book open and a dazed expression.)  Fantasy and science fiction, even horror, more than any other genres require that kind of immersion.  Mysteries, you can set down.  Chick lit, romance, lit, adventure.  All of it can be put down, generally without distress.  But fantasy. . . I put down a George R R Martin book and there's a need for transition from his world to mine and back again.  It's hard to let go, harder to get back into it.  Science fiction's the same, at least any SF book with an Other World setting.  And Horror?  It's all about atmosphere.  You lose that momentum and make a trip back to the real world--you're in danger of gaining perspective, of stepping back in at just the wrong moment where the whole thing just seems sort of. . . silly.  

This may explain why out of all the books bought last year, the ones that remain unread are 90% high fantasy or elaborate SF.  And the ones that I've been picking up are now-world settings, for the most part; quick paced adventures with a modern feel.  I want to read the books malingering on my shelves.  I've been drooling over Marie Brennan's Midnight Never Come for so long that she's finished the sequel to it.  Yeah, it's past time to add reading to my schedule.

How do you guys do it?  Can you read high fantasy in spurts?  

Currently reading, or attempting to--I put it down last week and haven't picked it up again: Michael Chabon's Gentlemen of the Road.