In defence of easy reading

- 1 min

The last time I had enough time to read books was during Covid, until September 2020, when I moved to Amsterdam for a new job. Along with applying to what felt like hundreds of jobs, I somehow also managed to read quite a lot of books.

When I moved to Amsterdam, I got incredibly busy and did not have enough time until May, 2023, when I was finally at the beginning of my career break.

I had mainly been reading non-fiction recently, partly because books about diseases and supply chain were the recent fad. This changed when I picked a murder mystery called Murder on Mustique by Anne Glenconner. I decided that I should take out some time to read “airport” books (although I had bought it at the local Waterstones) and get into reading “easy” literature.

I welcomed the change from my usual serious reading of non-fiction and software documentation pages. And I loved it!

Although the storyline was predictable, I enjoyed the overall tone of the book.

After completing Murder on Mustique I went to Scheltema (a bookstore in Amsterdam) and came across The Inheritance Games series, which was advertised as being famous on BookTok.

I decided to embrace my newfound interest of airport books, and ended up reading the first three novels in the series within three weeks.

For the next series. I moved to a more critically acclaimed series Thursday Murder Club. I have a huge fan of Richard Osman as a quiz presenter on Pointless and House of Games and had been meaning to try out his books. They certainly did not disappoint. I will probably write another post focussed on the series.

Since, I go back to grad school again, this year will probably contain more non-fiction and serious topics. I do plan to re-read all the Harry Potter books, so that my reading experience does not become too dry.

Let us see what reading joy this year begins.