I Can’t Read Good

I’m actually very concerned about how difficult of a time I have reading a book. Lauren has purchased close to a dozen baby books and has been ripping through them and passing them off to me, and there they sit. It took five months to get through a book for dads-to-be. Not because I wasn’t interested or didn’t pick up the book and try to read, but I simply cannot read a book! Really! I’m obviously not illiterate, but I am 90% unable to comprehend the words on a page.

I open a book, read the first paragraph, and then stop and realize that I have no idea what I just read. I comprehended absolutely nothing. My mind literally immediately began to wander the instant my eye saw the first letter of the first word. I go back and re-read the first paragraph. Again, you could ask me what I had just read and I wouldn’t know if it was about parenting or whales or ice cubes. In fact I read about four paragraphs before snapping out of it and realizing I had been reading but not comprehending anything. So I go back, and slowly, word by word, re-read very carefully the first paragraph. Still nothing. I am now making a conscious effort to not let my mind drift off, but it took so much mental energy to keep my mind from wandering that I still haven’t comprehended what I’ve read. By the fourth or fifth time of re-reading a paragraph, I maybe have a clue and could answer a few questions on what I had read.

And then it’s on to the second paragraph of page 1 of the Introduction.

And that is how it took me five months to read a 300-page book, despite picking it up just about every day for some amount of time.

Quick research online shows this is a telltale sign of ADD, inability to focus on anything or get bored too easily. If that was true, how am I able to routinely sit and watch 3+ hours of baseball every single day, when only 14 minutes actually involve real action¹? How can I happily sit on an airplane for 3+ hours staring at the back of my seat without getting bored? How have I been able to write 1300 lengthy blog posts? It doesn’t seem to add up. It’s just reading adult books that throws me off so bad. If anyone has any advice or tips, I’d be open to it!


  1. I’d say you’re not interested enough in the subject matter. Maybe you need to subscribe to Audible and listen to your books rather than read them, which is how I “read” 90% of all my books. Can’t believe I raised a non-reader. For shame.

  2. You must get that from me. I can’t sit and read a book either. It has to be something that I’m very interested in and not too long for me to be able to read it. I’d rather watch the movie than read the book.

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