Making the Internet My Accountability Partner

Anyone who loves anything will tell you there are times when you’re interest and commitment wanes. When your hobby is books and reading we call that a slump, or reading slump. I can find it hard to tell when I’m in a slump. It sounds like it should be obvious, but I find it helps for me to spell it out. Some ways to tell if you’re in a reading slump is if it feels like work to get through a page, if you’d rather be bored than reading the book you’re trying to work on. Another give away is what would you tell a friend about what you’re reading. If you can’t pick out a single thing you like, or if you find you have no energy or enthusiasm in giving the synopsis you’re probably in a reading slump.

In my experience there is one primary reason why someone can be in a reading slump and one less likely but still possible reason. The primary reason for a reading slump is that the book you’re reading isn’t for you. This doesn’t mean that the book is bad, it just means that you are a unique individual with your own preferences and tastes. It’s ok not to like something, even if other people liked it or even if you thought you would like it. The less likely reason is life. YEs we all get busy or stressed in life and sometimes that means we need to prioritize other uses for our time. However, there is a difference between I want to read this book I’m just exhausted or I’m too stressed to get into it, versus I have 5 minutes of free time and I’d rather not pick that book back up.

So now that we know what a reading slump is what do we do about it. One I am continuing to challenge myself to get more comfortable with is DNF-ing. DNF stands for Did Not Finish and as it states you acknowledge that you will not finish this book and move onto the next one. It’s not always a pleasant feeling to “give up”, but when I reframe it as I now have an opportunity to read something that excites me, I can move through the disappointment.

Reading slumps can often affect your willingness to pick up a new book Maybe you’re dealing with some lingering emotions about not being able to finish a book or not having a book meet your expectations. It’s easy to look at a book shelf and feel nervous; what if this feeling goes on what if I don’t like the next book? I have two pieces of contradicting advice but hear me out. Sometimes we get too familiar with a genre. Sometimes the tropes have become too routine or you’ve already read the best that the genre has to offer. So one piece of advice is to explore new genres. You get to become invested in the best that a genre has to offer and have a new exciting experience. On the other hand, sometimes we get into slumps because we are trying to read too many different genres, maybe someone shamed us for our preferred genre or we’re trying to read everything that’s popular regardless of whether it’s for us. In this case we need to allow ourselves to return to our favorites. Sometimes that means return to a tried and true genre and sometimes it means reread an old favorite book.

The last piece of advice I have is let go of unhelpful and arbitrary ‘standards’ for what reading looks like. Many of us get the idea that we have to read physical books or we need to read ‘high-brow’ literature, but that’s patently not true. Comics count as reading, fanfic counts as reading, social media can even count as reading. Audio books, ebooks, and even podcasts count as reading.

I hope this helps you out of your reading stumps. Whatever and however you read I hope it brings you joy!