Reading is a great activity, but, if you haven’t done it in a while, starting again can be daunting. “Ready, Set, Read!” is the social media campaign I’ve been working on to educate adults on the benefits of reading, as well as the lack of reading in American adults. I’m also hoping to encourage more reading. For this week’s social media post, I focused on the topic of starting to read again when you haven’t in a while.
I began by compiling a list of ways to start reading again. In 2021, the Student Union Magazine from Malmö University published a list with six tips to help you start reading again. Tweaking this list slightly, I came up with the tips I wanted to share for this social media campaign. The next step was to decide how I wanted to present these tips. Providing a visual representation for this seemed like the best way. I got to work on planning a video that would show others how they can start reading again. First I needed to pick what the exact style of video should be. I decided that it made the most sense to act out each tip myself, rather than only talking about the tips or writing them out. This kind of video provides something more interesting while being helpful and easier to remember. In addition to acting out scenarios in the video, I recorded a voiceover in which I also stated my advice with explanations. Each tip is written out on-screen as well. I hope that putting everything together in this way allows it to stick with the audience.
How Can I Start Reading Again?
The list I shared in my video includes simple things anyone can do if they want to start reading again. The first tip is to start slow and have a plan of when you’ll read. I typically read every night as I’m winding down before bed. In the video, I show myself only reading ten pages of a book because even just ten pages is better than nothing. Some people might find reading overwhelming at first, so doing it little by little helps. The next tip is that books don’t have feelings, so you can’t hurt them. If you start a book and you’re not enjoying it, there’s no reason you can’t try another one. Thrillers have become my favorite genre to read, but it took me a while to figure that out. I represent this in my video by showing different genres of books I went through before landing on thrillers. This seamlessly leads into the third tip, which is simply to pick books you actually like. Some people might think in order to read as an adult it has to be a more educational read, but there’s nothing wrong with enjoying a fiction novel. The last tip I shared is that reading doesn’t need to become an expensive hobby. There are many libraries that are completely free to borrow books from.
Gillian Rainville | QU Graduate Blog 
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