How Do You Escape From a Reading Slump?
(asking for a friend who is me)
Not long after I shared in this space how many amazing things I read last year, the inevitable happened: I started finding it much, much harder to get through a complete book. If my 2023 reading felt like flying, my 2024 reading has felt like running through wet sand. In hiking boots. And also, I loathe running.
Part of me is enraged and incredulous: how can this be happening? How can I be struggling to sit down and really get into Glorious Exploits and Honestly, We Meant Well, two books that should be exactly in the free space of the “this is my jam” bingo board? The former is about two Syracusans who put on a production of Medea using Athenian POWs after the Sicilian expedition, and the latter is about a Classics professor who goes to Aegina to recover from her husband’s infidelity. With both books, I read and loved the first chapter, then put the book aside for so long I had to reread the first chapter, loved it again, and then haven’t looked at it since.
Lest you think the problem here is Classics-book related… it isn’t. I’ve gotten to a place where I have an entire damn folder of Substack articles saved up about All Fours and Liars because obviously I will adore them when I finally sit down with them! But right now they’re just sitting in the Kindle app unopened, with their cheery “NEW” banner taunting me.
Logically, I know that reading slumps are common, they happen, and they end. Emotionally, I’m mad as hell. And the most fun part is that I know exactly how this happened and who to blame: my younger sister, who I adore and whose permission I got to dunk on her here. She rules, but it is her fault. Hers, and Rebecca Yarros’s.
Late last year, when my sister was extremely pregnant and I was zooming toward finishing my 100th book of the year, we had this text message conversation:
God. I’m insufferable! Maybe this reading slump has actually been a good thing, if it means that I’m not saying things like that.
Because she’s patient, she waited a few weeks before returning with this:
Look: she is a very smart person who knows me very well, and she knew there was no way in hell I could resist a request that included “and you’re a great reader so I feel like you will pick up on shit that I don’t see.” That’s my kryptonite!
Although she definitely overestimated my reading speed:
It took me about a week to finish the book, which I did on my birthday. I texted her to tell her. She called me back from the hospital, where my nephew was getting ready to make an early appearance, although she was much less interested in discussing that than she was in hearing my thoughts on the book and extracting a promise from me that I would immediately start the second book if she ended up having the baby that night. In conclusion, I ended up reading 1500 pages of dragon smut that badly needed a strong editor in the course of about two weeks. Ever since then, reading has been a real slog.
This isn’t my first reading slump, so I know it won’t last forever. I know reading slumps aren’t unusual. That’s why there are so many great articles written with advice for how to get out of them! Like this one. The suggestions in that piece are the most common ones — reread an old favorite, try audiobooks, don’t be afraid to give a book a DNF (“did not finish”), try a new genre, give yourself a break. All great suggestions, none of which are currently working for me. Alas.
Here are some more suggestions that I just came up with off the top of my head. These aren’t evidence-backed and I haven’t tried any of them, but they feel right:
Haunt your local bookstore like a vengeful Victorian ghost
Read Hillbilly Elegy until you find the couch-fucking anecdote
Anytime you read the Terms & Conditions, that counts as a book! JK, you’ll never do that
Maybe if dragon smut caused this, fairy smut is the cure?
Print out all the substacks you read in a month, have them professionally bound, and voila: a book
Find a book you loathed in high school English and revisit it to see whether you stand by your hatred or whether it was actually good when you weren’t looking for themes to write 5-paragraph essays about
Start including the books you read to your kids. Each time you read a book to them, that’s a unique book. Did you just read the same book five times in a row? Congrats, you’re 1/20 of the way to 100 books this year
Jane Austen. that’s it, that’s the advice
It’s embarrassing to admit that I’m in a reading slump. I want to be the kind of person who reads 100 books a year, not the kind of person who reads a bunch of dragon smut in January and whose brain then gives up on reading for the year. I know those two things aren’t exactly mutually exclusive, but still. It’s hard for me.
The most important thing, I think, is to come to peace with your reading slump. Which is something that so far I’ve only been able to do once it’s in my rearview mirror. After the slump has resolved, it’s a lot easier to have grace for myself and see the arc. During the slump, all I can think is, what the hell is wrong with you? Are you even still a book person? And if you aren’t a book person, are you anything at all?
I think I’m hoping that, in some weird way, publishing that earlier newsletter piece jinxed me and therefore talking about my slump will break the jinx. But if any of you have any advice or commiseration for me… share it in the comments. The more absurd, the better, because I’m more than ready to get back in the groove. Preferably before another Fourth Wing sequel comes out and my sister flatters me into reading it.
I think you're right that the key thing about getting over a reading slump is self acceptance.
For some reason, only two authors can get me out of a slump - Agatha Christie and Georgette Heyer. I like both but they aren't my favourite. But something about them just gets me going again
This post really got to me! Every time I'm stuck in the slog of the "reading slump," it feels like all the many, MANY books on my bookshelf look down at me as if to say, "We deserve to be on the self of someone that will actually read us." Then they just guilt me throughout the slump until I finally come out of it. It's great! (read: terrible).