Time reading vs watching tv

[sunshinedaises]

How do you divide your time between reading your book and watching tv shows you like? Do you read at certain times of the day? Im trying to get back into reading but also I’m in the middle of a tv series and I don’t have much time to myself with 2 small kids and work.

I listen to audiobooks when I'm working or doing housework. I also read when dh or dcs are watching something I don't want to watch!

I don't treat reading as something I have to do though, as I find that puts me off. I don't join the 50 books in a year threads on here or join any book clubs.

I get through quite a lot of books, but I want to actually enjoy reading.

The other thing I do is if a book isn't really speaking to me, I try to get through the first half, even slightly skimming it. If I still don't like it, I give up.

We limit tv otherwise we’d easily watch it for a few hours. We watch one episode of an hour long series, two if it’s shorter or one movie. Then we put on music and read.

I sometimes do crochet or jigsaws while we’re watching tv so I’m making use of that time too.

Once the kids have gone to bed DH and I will watch about an hour of TV. He'll then go and game and that's when I read. I love it. It's such a relaxing way to wind down from the day.

The more I read the happier I feel, while the more I stare at a screen the worse I feel. Re-reading favourite books brings me more joy than anything, especially P. G. Wodehouse, Patrick Fermor, Oscar Wilde and Dickens…oh, and Austen and Douglas Adams as well.

But the supreme pleasure is laying in a hot bath with a glass of wine listening to Stephen Fry read P. G. Wodehouse or Sherlock Holmes. Bliss.

I read on my kindle at night in bed to wind down. I bought the smallest one so it goes in my pocket and I pull it out and read a page when I'm waiting for the kettle to boil or at a bus stop etc. That gets me through about 20 books a year almost passively so I'm not dedicating my evening to it.

Then I'll put on an audiobook while I'm playing some video games and get through another 20 or so a year that way. I tend to rotate between spending evenings watching TV or playing games just depending on my mood. I found it's better to stick to one or the other as trying to split every evening across both tends to just make me feel like I barely got to do either.