{"id":2103,"date":"2015-01-14T02:53:28","date_gmt":"2015-01-13T21:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/?p=2103"},"modified":"2015-01-14T14:12:21","modified_gmt":"2015-01-14T09:12:21","slug":"our-reading-resolutions-shehla-wynne-dwl-associate-director","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/2015\/01\/our-reading-resolutions-shehla-wynne-dwl-associate-director\/","title":{"rendered":"Our Reading Resolutions: Shehla Wynne, DWL Associate Director"},"content":{"rendered":"

New year, new books, new resolutions! This month, the Desi Writers\u2019 Lounge team is sharing its reading resolutions: goals for the new year, finally tackling those to-be-read piles. Join the conversation by sharing your resolutions in the comments and on Facebook<\/a> and Twitter<\/a>.<\/strong>
\n 
\nIt is not particularly hard for me to put together my reading resolutions.\u00a0I can just list the dozens of books on my bookshelf that remain unread.\u00a0But truthfully, I have just one actual resolution: to read less.\u00a0Don’t worry, I’m going to explain.
\n 
\nAs is true for many others, I am almost always plugged in and have been so for the past half-decade. I spend at least 10 hours a day working on my computer.\u00a0I read legal opinions, briefs, motions, agreements.\u00a0And of course, I read the news online.\u00a0I read articles shared by my friends on social media, I visit websites such as thebrowser.com<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0longform.org<\/a>.\u00a0By the end of the day, I am so tired of reading that I don’t read any books at all.
\n 
\nOne thing became clear to me last fall when I had some free time and became reacquainted with books: I miss reading fiction (thank you, Interviews with Hideous Men <\/i>and The Goldfinch<\/i>).\u00a0I miss that feeling of losing myself in a book, of being too engrossed to eat, sleep, leave the house, answer the phone.\u00a0And I am so utterly exhausted by social media.\u00a0So last month, I decided to read fewer articles online.\u00a0I told myself I would read a book for at least an hour a day. That it doesn’t matter that the train part of my morning commute is only 10 minutes, I must read a book, a physical book (no Kindles for me, thank you very much).\u00a0I bought a digital alarm clock and started going to bed without my phone in the room.\u00a0I made an effort to avoid social media.\u00a0 And it worked.\u00a0 I started reading, actually reading<\/i>,\u00a0books.
\n 
\nIt started with\u00a0City of Sin and Splendour: Writings on Lahore —\u00a0<\/i>a new perspective on the city I call home.\u00a0 Another book on my bedside table is Goodbye to All That, Writers on Loving and Leaving New York<\/i>.\u00a0Having just moved to New York after spending a decade in DC, I am in a reflective mood about cities, their effect on a person’s\u00a0identity, and how and why one chooses to put down permanent roots somewhere.\u00a0For my birthday, my dear friend (Papercuts Associate Editor) Noorulain Noor sent me Shadab Zeest Hashmi’s Kohl & Chalk<\/i>.\u00a0I am excited about taking that on my too-short-for-seriously-reading train ride.
\n 
\nIt doesn’t really matter\u00a0what\u00a0<\/i>I end up reading.\u00a0The reader in me has nudged me silently through the years and I have been buying books all along. I am now looking forward to actually losing myself in them — sixty, or twenty, or ten minutes at a time.
\n 
\nI know this is ironic because you are reading this online, but I am firm in my resolution this year: I will read less online.
\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

New year, new books, new resolutions! This month, the Desi Writers\u2019 Lounge team is sharing its reading resolutions: goals for the new year, finally tackling those to-be-read piles. Join the conversation by sharing your resolutions in the comments and on Facebook and Twitter.   It is not particularly hard for me to put together my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2047,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[470],"tags":[497,500,498,499,501],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2103"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2115,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2103\/revisions\/2115"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2047"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/desiwriterslounge.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}