My reading life goes in spurts and phases. I might tear through four books and then not pick up a book for two months. At times, I’ve even attempted to organize and socialize my reading.

Failure.

There’s no point in feeling guilty about it, I have since decided, since there’s such a long line ahead of that in the personal guilt queue.

It’s not that I don’t have books that I haven’t read.

It’s not that I don’t enjoy reading.

There’s a time issue, but I can make the time.

I just don’t feel like reading, as if I have too much of my own ideas or personal story in my head to carry around someone else’s.

Wandering through Barnes and Noble this afternoon made me realize how far down the non-reader path I’ve gotten. Not one book enticed me enough to even take it off of the shelf and smell the pages, much less read a partial chapter. The Teen Fiction section repulsed me, all Gothic vampires and werewolves. Four racks of basically the same storyline.

Bleh.

I’m full up on non-fiction and religious books; I’ve had far too steady a diet of that for so long that I may have forgotten how to smile because of it.

I went to the mystery section. I’d enjoyed C. J. Sansom’s Dissolution several years ago, but I didn’t feel any real interest in his work as I stood in front of the shelf. Besides, I had plenty of unread fiction books — mysteries, even — on my own shelves.

There was only one fix: re-entry with an old standby or two. In this case, M. M. Kaye and P. D. James.

Read the stories (particularly Kaye) many, many times. It’s like meeting an old friend for a chat, these re-entry books. I found Kaye on the shelves of the High School library and have caught myself daydreaming about Zanzibar and India and Cypress and Kashmir ever since.

Library books are free, a very nice bonus.

We’ll see how it goes. I just need to get back in the habit again.