After streaming burnout, books come to the rescue
Reading the old fashion form of entertainment is back and not a bad idea.
March 30, 2021
I’m absolutely sick of streaming. Instead, I have fallen back in love with reading.
After being cooped in our houses for over a year, binge-watching has become a daily occurrence and the art of watching seven seasons in one week has been perfected.
Yet like so many people, I have exhausted everything on my list and then some on Netflix, Hulu, and Disney+. I have watched everything from sitcoms new and old to documentaries about cat murders, from the Marvel superhero films to cringeworthy teen romances with terrible acting.
I had enough. I refused to watch anything more.
Then my #BookTok infiltrated my TikTok For You page with recommendations. Nostalgia and memories of my childhood came flooding back.
It all started when I saw Suzanne Collins’ new prequel to The Hunger Games series, The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes. Somehow reading about a nation whose youth had to violently fight to the death was my favorite in elementary school.
I can vividly recall the days of sitting on the wooden swing in the yard of my grandparents’ house reading the first Hunger Games book while they were making lunch, and the time I begged my fourth-grade art teacher to let me make my animal painting a Mockingjay, like the cover of the third book.
My mom and grandma used to take me to the library all the time to pick out books. I would always be found with my nose in a book, immersed in worlds with wizards or vampires and werewolves.
But when high school started I became so consumed with work for AP and honors classes and so worried about perfecting my transcript for college, that I left behind my purest form of escapism.
I had not read a book for leisure in over three years. So I read the 500-page prequel book in one day — even though I did not like the concept of giving President Snow any sympathy.
I had forgotten how much I loved being able to envision worlds and characters.
Even though I am refraining from watching more shows and movies, I am now creating my own films in my mind again. I have reclaimed the title of director of my imagination.
I have reread many of my childhood favorites for comfort, picked up new enemies-to- lovers fiction, and taken on some classics that I missed out on when school was shut down last year.
All have entertained me and allowed me to de-stress in ways that Netflix no longer could.
So if you feel like you have binged absolutely everything and are tired of the headaches that come from looking at screens all day, try a trip to Barnes & Noble.
