I'm finding I'm not really a bad reader. I just don't want to read things that bore me.

Sometimes I feel like I'm a bad reader, like I have comprehension problems. I read two chapters/essays recently from a collection on virtue ethics. The first was great. It's a classic polemic in 20th century moral philosophy. If you know about moral philosophy, you know what I'm talking about. I really enjoyed it, and felt like I learned.

The second one, though, didn't move me. I read half of it, and none of it stuck in my head. I felt down about myself, like I was a bad reader. But I thought about it, and it was about the same difficulty as the last essay. It just bored me. I didn't care about any of it. Since I'm not reading it for homework, I have no excuse to think about it too hard. I have no obligation to it. Once I realized this, it gave me a lot of confidence about my previous insecurities.

The moral of the story is, don't worry if you have a hard time reading something. It might just be boring.