Reading doesn’t have to be isolating

At midnight on New Year’s Eve, I was in bed reading, so engrossed in my book I didn’t even notice the turn of the year had happened. It is true that reading can be quite an isolating experience because it is something often done in the comfort of your own room, in bed with a hot beverage, like my New Year’s Eve.

There are ways, however, you can make reading into more of a social activity. Some may instantly think of this as book club, where you all decide on a book to read and meet up once a month to discuss it. Whilst this may work for some, it might not necessarily be the best thing for students as it is yet another book with another deadline to read it by.

There’s no deadline to finishing the book, like with a book club

Simply discussing the book at a book club is what makes reading a social experience, so we can translate this into our lives. Meeting up with your friends for lunch on campus and discussing what you’ve read that morning is a sure way to break out of that isolation of your room, bed and tea. Even just the act of reading around people makes it less isolating, for example going to a local library, the university library or a café.

It doesn’t have to be course reading you meet up to discuss. If you and a couple of friends have a shared New Year’s resolution of reading more for pleasure, you could meet up for coffee and discuss your texts of choice. There’s no deadline to finishing the book, like with a book club, and you can recommend reads to each other.

If there is something that you and your friends all want to read, why not get together and listen to the audiobook on loud? That way you’re all together, listening to the same words and it’s a sure way to ensure reading isn’t as isolating as it could be if you were on your own.