PGC 2013. Challenge #1: Reading

Something I want to really work in this year is my reading habits or lack thereof I should say. On average I read about 3 books per year. Granted I read for my college courses but that would be more like skimming, I skim books and read the answers or key points that I was looking for. One of my closest girlfriends reads more than anyone I know, I envy her for that. I want to be able to escape from the internet more and sit down and read a book instead. My attention span is about as long at a gnat now that we have access to everything on the world wide web. Right now I'm RE-WATCHING season one of Scandal, watching a TV show that I have already seen every single episode. Is it necessary that I watch it again? Apparently I have nothing better to do with my free time.

The internet has made it so easy for us to be lazy and I have to break that deathly addiction. It will be a challenge but I can do it. When I find that I have completed all my tasks for the day and I'm restless with nothing to do, instead of clicking on Netflix I need to pick up a book. I have been reading the same book The Path to Love for about 3 months now, it's only 300 pages. I pick it up when I remember and read about 5 pages before I go to sleep. If I read 10 pages a day of any/most books, I could read one book a month. So that's what I have decided to do. I'm going to finish The Path to Love by Deepak Chopra  which is a great book by the way (I will write about it when I finish it).

After that I will start on Clutch Magazine's "100 books by black women" list. I realized too that when I do read, the books are normally written by males or white women, never black women. It's about time I support them. I will be honest with you, I wrote off many black authors years ago because I felt they were so typical just like our TV shows. Most of the popular black authors wrote about baby mama drama, men cheating on their women, men on the down low & church. It was all the same and began to bore me. No longer will I stereotype black literature and I will give it another shot, time to support my people. If we don't who else will? Clutch made the list based off suggestions they received from their tweeples about their favorite books written by black female authors. I printed off the list so I could look them up and pick which ones I wanted to read this year. Happy to say I already had one of them, Kindred by Octavia Butler, my friend (the bookworm)  gave it to me last year for my birthday and of course I haven't read it yet.

Reading will be one of my many personal growth challenges of 2013 and I'm ready to take it on. Will you be joining me?