Reading was my first big passion. Around second or third grade I began devouring books at my local library. I couldn’t wait for my mother to bring me there so I could check out more books. I spent so many hours with my nose buried in books my parents urged me to go outside and play. But I never stayed away from books long; I loved losing myself in literary worlds. 

After college I vowed never to stop reading for pleasure. But after a brief stint at a publishing house in New York, I drifted away. Instead of curling up with a good book, I found myself reading magazines or watching movies instead. 

Attempts to jump start my reading would bog down when I came across a well-regarded book that failed to engage. Was this really what it meant to be a grownup? I couldn’t help but recall my father mostly reading trade journals at the height of his career.  

Michelle Slatalla argued this case a few days ago in the New York Times, writing nostalgically about her own faded passion for book reading, made all the more bittersweet by watching her daughters lose themselves in novels. 

Books once affected her so deeply then that she can still remember the physical act of reading them. These days, however, books sit forlornly on her night table half-read, waiting for her to get the urge to dip into them again. 

Slatalla posits that readers lose their ability to be transported by books as they become more discerning. “It’s an inevitable byproduct of growing up that I formed too many opinions of my own to be able to give in wholeheartedly to to the prospect of living inside someone else’s universe.”

That’s not it. Critical thinking does not preclude surrender to art in any form, as Pauline Kael memorably telegraphed in “I Lost It at the Movies.” Grownup time constraints make that surrender more challenging, but by no means impossible. 

I rediscovered my passion for books a few years ago, when my boss anointed me book review editor. It’s just one of the duties I juggle these days at Variety, but oh what a treat.       

    

My father also came back to book reading in his retirement, insisting that I give Harry Potter a try. And my mother, who didn’t begin working until her kids were teenagers, never really lost her joy of reading. She always managed to sneak book reading in between her chores. 

Perhaps Slatalla needs to treat herself to a good old-fashioned book binge. You’re never too old to lose it in the book aisle.