The Eighth Day of the Week

It’s been difficult and trying and scary time. And it feels like there is an eight day of the week every week. A day to slog through. I have a feeling many of you can relate. Instead of slogging through, what if we find a different way to view that “extra day?”

Man reading for pleasure makes his own eighth day of the week

As I’ve sat and tried to write a blog post, I’ve struggled. No topic, no words I wrote seemed appropriate. I needed an intervention. So I did some internet browsing (because that’s this introvert’s social distancing way of having an intervention.) Then I came across a quote that gave me a different perspective.

“Let’s be reasonable and add an eighth day to the week that is devoted exclusively to reading.”

Lena Dunham

The Eighth Day of the Week

Oh, what if such a day existed? What if we could make one exist? No, I don’t mean re-do the calendar. I mean, what if we could give ourselves a day to devote only to reading? Would you?

The Challenges

Many of you may think it sounds lovely, but you couldn’t possibly do that because of responsibilities. Life means responsibility. You take responsibility for yourself, children, spouse, ailing parents, job, paying the bills, and oh-so much more. Do you make one of your responsibilities to read for pleasure? How do you manage it with your life-challenges? 

Reading For Pleasure

Girl reading under a blanket makes her own eighth day of the week.

It’s been a long time since I’ve read a book for pleasure. As an author, my writer brain dissects and analyzes everything I read. But with the right books, the writer brain shuts off, and it delights the reader me.

“Reading one book is like eating one potato chip.” 

Diane Duane

This writer at BookRiot seems to think that “fun” and “easy” reads are devoured. He’s not sure that is the experience a reader wants. But I know that in my diet somedays I want those potato chips. Don’t you?

What books are potato chips for you? I would venture to say that most of you would give the names of a book series you enjoy. Or is a specific genre your book potato chip? Maybe you’re an omnivore reader and all books are potato-chip-reads.

Treasure

“There is more treasure in books than in all the pirate’s loot on Treasure Island.” 

Walt Disney

I believe each reader finds at least one book full of treasure. I’ve written about two of mine: Dune and A Wrinkle in Time.

bookshelves filled with books will need more than one eighth day of the week to read

There are millions of books. There are so many that we really do need an eighth day of the week to read more, don’t we? Please share how you create your eighth day and which books are your potato chip reads and which ones are your treasures?
https://lynettemburrows.com/tag/finding-time-to-read/
lynettemburrows.com
crawl=CC-MAIN-2022-40
142017
application/http; msgtype=response
sha1:G54UF4RSP36SX5GPW6MDXOCG3N5L7FKD
<urn:uuid:f68f7aab-af52-4817-bdbb-bea62a8735a5>
2022-10-06T14:37:49Z
38.29.223.152
text/html
sha1:PPFXQ5MBBBKS25J4XTMYGO2MO7NXFISY
<urn:uuid:50d79154-6e10-41c6-a26b-a459af63198e>
https://lynettemburrows.com/tag/finding-time-to-read/
response
<urn:uuid:95d91747-435e-4510-ba44-63a5d27d9067>
isPartOf: CC-MAIN-2022-40
publisher: Common Crawl
description: Wide crawl of the web for September/October 2022
operator: Common Crawl Admin (info@commoncrawl.org)
hostname: ip-10-67-67-183
software: Apache Nutch 1.19 (modified, https://github.com/commoncrawl/nutch/)
robots: checked via crawler-commons 1.4-SNAPSHOT (https://github.com/crawler-commons/crawler-commons)
format: WARC File Format 1.1
conformsTo: https://iipc.github.io/warc-specifications/specifications/warc-format/warc-1.1/