This report concerns my personal chronotopes of reading during the spring of 2016. My goal is to provide a detailed account of the specific times and locations at which I read, and in turn to observe how the spatial and temporal aspects of my reading habits relate to different reading materials.
On weekdays between the hours of 8:30 and 4:30, my reading tends to be work-related. Any reading for work also tends to be done at my desk, and almost always inside the same building. Typically I will read e-mails, instruction manuals, and examination drafts. These reading practices reflect the reality of my schedule and the responsibilities and expectations which are tied to it.
My 40 hours-per-week schedule, however, has been perturbed by the fact that I must attend a lecture for a spring course, for which I must also complete a certain amount of assigned readings – mostly academic in nature, although mandatory Harlequin romance creates an exception. I have developed the habit of relying on last-minute necessity in order to finish reading the assigned articles and chapters on time. Thus, most reading related to this course is done at a desk in the Humanities Centre within the hour that precedes the lecture. The constraints of this self-imposed time slot also affects the quality of my reading: after arriving on campus, I have less than an hour to eat lunch and read an article or chapter, which frequently translates into skimming for key points, instead of a thorough reading.
In addition to my role as a student, I also work as a tutor on Monday and Thursday afternoons. The location depends on which student I am tutoring – either a student’s home, or a school library. The reading materials consist mainly of textbooks, instructions pertaining to assignments and the occasional composition written by a student. The reading I do in relation to tutoring is once again fairly regular in terms of time and space, but consists of a variety of materials.
Furthermore, I have recently become involved in a research project for a professor, which involves diverse reading tasks. One of my responsibilities is to check the collective project e-mail on assigned days (Tuesdays and Wednesdays), as well as communicating with other students and professors that are involved with the research, which means that I must also read my own e-mails on a daily basis. In addition to this consistent and pre-determined pattern, I have also been tasked with assembling an annotated bibliography. Therefore, I need to read various articles and books concerning topics related to the research project. However, I have fewer constraints when it comes to this particular task, and tend to work on the bibliography during the evening, in a very irregular fashion.
Outside of the reading I do for my work and studies, I read comic books in a somewhat consistent manner. New issues in comic book series are published on a monthly basis, and I read enough series to typically have at least one comic each week. I will often stop by the store on Wednesday afternoons (the day on which new issues are released), and read the comics that I have bought later during the same day. It is nonetheless worth noting that this habit is not always consistent, especially if I am busy. I usually read comics at home, either in my bedroom or in the living room. Other bedroom and living room reading I do includes books, ranging from novels to autobiographies or other non-fiction works, typically in the evening. However, this is very infrequent, partly due to the length of such reading materials and their time-consuming nature.
Finally, I find myself engaging in a form of constant, low-commitment reading throughout the day, characterized by a wide-ranging variety of materials. This category is a catch-all of sorts for incidental reading which includes signs, advertisements, text messages, online articles or reviews, and twitter accounts, all of which I am susceptible to read on any given day. Some of these reading materials are present in public spaces, and others have been made accessible at virtually any time thanks to portable devices. While it is true that books or other forms of physical print are portable and can be read almost anywhere (Collinson 33), they do not feature the same variety of material as laptops or mobile phones. The fact that I have access to such a wide variety of reading materials, regardless of time and place (in my everyday life) makes it very difficult to define these reading habits according to those terms. I am liable to be reading any of these materials immediately after waking up or before going to sleep, on public transit or while walking, at home or while I am out, alone or with others. In fact, I think that this type of reading is such an integral part of my day that all the combinations of the materials and scenarios which I have mentioned would be vastly outnumbered by the omissions left in their wake. Collinson suggests that “reading has become an increasingly unruly activity under the conditions of modernity” (33), referring to the disappearance of a literary canon. However, this observation extends to the effects of technology upon reading practices. In spite of how unstructured and vague this form of reading may be, I find this to be the most prevalent form of reading in my everyday life.
In conclusion, the times at which I read often reflect the reasons for which I am reading. Parts of my schedule dedicated to work and school entail certain specific reading materials related to those tasks. However, the reading I do in my spare time is characterized by a wide variety made possible by technological advances. It is also worth noting that a busy schedule limits the time I can dedicate to any particular reading material, leading to reading habits that can accommodate both diversity and a short attention span.
