How Mandatory Reading Destroyed My Love for Books

I have been a book lover since I was a little girl. I remember reading every day in bed before I went to sleep. Turning off the lamp and pretending to be asleep when my mother came to check if I was asleep. Then, when I knew she was almost downstairs, I turned on my light again and continued reading until I was tired enough to sleep.

Even back then, I preferred fairytales over the other books in my collection. I have read some other books, but fairy tales and more specific fantasy books are the ones that I get lost in. As we age, the expectations of what is appropriate to read begin to change.

For some reason, when you are in grades one to four, as we call it in the Netherlands, kindergarten, for part of the world. It is all right to read about dragons, magic, talking animals, and other fantastical elements. The libraries are filled with mythical stories of adventures to different worlds.

When you get older and enter high school, this changes. The curriculum demands different stories. High school students in the Netherlands are supposed to read literature. Depending on your level, this is still true for some high school students; they have become a little bit more flexible in the books they are allowed to read. Reading anything that wasn’t literature was frowned upon in my time. For me, this ruined reading for many years; I didn't find enjoyment in literature.

And I am not the only one who stopped reading around age 13/14. This is especially true for my generation; there are lots of examples of bloggers, YouTubers, who have lost enjoyment of reading due to the mandatory reading for school. Some people will never pick up a fiction book for the rest of their lives, others, like me, find their way back to reading books they enjoy. This mandatory reading of literature causes students to never read for enjoyment again. It becomes all about studying the field you want to work in. After all the mandatory school reading is done, many don't have the energy to pick up another book, even if it is for pure relaxation purposes.

This is what happened to me: I lost all the enjoyment of reading after I graduated from high school. Since literature is the Netherlands' favorite genre of books, I have tried to be normal and read the popular books. There are a few books I did enjoy that were part of the mandatory school reading. Shakespeare’s Macbeth was such an impactful story. Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Sallinger was another book I have enjoyed, then there was this one book by a Dutch author Renate Dorrestein, it is called “Het Duister Dat Ons Scheidt” translated, it means “The Darkness That Divides Us”. That one was good, but most of these are not cheerful in any way. It also took me an incredibly long time to finish these. After a while, I stopped reading at all, as I could not find anything I truly enjoyed.

What brought me back to reading was Twilight by Stephenie Meyer, a book that gets as much hate as it does love. It was the first book in years that I got completely immersed in. I remember reading in the car; I was so absorbed in the story that I didn't hear the people who were talking to me. This is the feeling you want to get when reading, being transported elsewhere, forgetting everything and everyone around you. Twilight gave me back a piece of myself I had lost. I even told my family to read the books, and they also enjoyed them.

Outside of my family, I did not talk about the books I read. I live in a little town, and the people who live here are very narrow-minded and don’t understand why I could ever enjoy fantasy. Even with the movies making it into the cinema, it did not make a difference. In 2013, I found the platform Goodreads, and this is where I became an active member of many groups, found that there were so many interesting fantasy and science fiction books being published, and the awesome thing about it was that I could talk about it without the other person thinking I was weird.

It was such a wonderful feeling, finding a community of like-minded people who have read the same books I have. It helped me through a lot of tough times.

Now I am working at my dream job, I am a librarian, so I am allowed to talk about books every day. The schools are trying to change their reading curriculum; there is much more diversity, and the schools now also have libraries that are filled with young adult books, in all genres. I am glad there is a change within our school systems, which hopefully will result in students who continue to enjoy reading books.

There is a more hopeful outlook regarding reading. The challenge is to encourage the new generation to continue reading throughout their entire young adult years. That will be a story for another day. Have you ever fallen out of love with reading? What was the reason?

If you can't get enough of my content, consider finding me on my other websites. If you are interested in music, I write about it on Finding Flight Cases. If you want to collect books, I have started a secondhand online bookstore, Arcane Archives. I would love to help you find your next fantasy or science fiction read.