This was originally posted on YouTube, but I would like a space for it’s written form to be captured. If you’d rather listen, go ahead and click play on the video below.
Well friends, I have found myself in another reading slump.
Which got me thinking.
What even is a reading slump?
I consider a reading slump to be a time when no book sounds good. You’d rather be doing anything else but reading. What it looks like for me is a lot more time online and a lot less time spent in books. Sound familiar?
If you’ve been in the book-tube/book-blog world for a minute, you know about this.
I myself have created content on how to get out of a reading slump, because like many of you, I’ve been here before.
While I was contemplating this turn of events I tried to figure out when the term “reading slump” originated. But results were inconclusive.
I have a theory.
You see we have turned reading into a numbers game, setting goals for how many books we read each year, creating TBRs with hundreds of books or buying dozens of books at a time that then get dusty on our shelves until they are eventually donated, the books we read just blending together, each a slightly different version than the next.
I am guilty of all of these things.
Do you know what happens at the end of all of this? A reading slump. And what do we do, go out, get more books, add more to the TBR to get ourselves out of this slump to read 9 books in a month to then end up right back here.
Something is not right. This is not what the reading life should be.
We are accepting the publishing of subpar novels because they’re easy to read and reading 100 books in a year makes you sound better than reading 5.
But what if out of the 100 books you read, only 10 were great and out of the 5 your friend read, they were all fantastic. Who really had a better reading year?
Are you getting what I’m saying?
We are missing the point. We have turned to quantity over quality and after reading so many books with lame ideas your brain is saying that’s enough. If you don’t fill me with something worth remembering then I’d rather have nothing.
What’s the solution?
I have no freaking clue.
Here’s what I’m doing.
- I’m abandoning my reading challenge. No more tracking the books I read, watching that little bar go up and looking at each book like a number. I deleted Goodreads off my phone. I’m leaving it alone for the rest of the year.
- I’m going to stop picking up books just because they’re available and quick reads.
- I am giving myself time to read books, if it takes me a week fine, a month fine so be it.
- I’m going to read different things, I realized in 2024, I read many of the same books and while there’s something to be said about book taste, there’s also something to be said about overkill.
Will it work?
There’s only one way to find out.
After this video, I did a small series on redesigning my reading life. You can check that out on my YouTube channel here.
What are your thoughts on reading slumps? Let me know!