I’ve just come out of one of the worst reading slumps I’ve ever had. I blame it on the emotional comedown of just having just arrived home from an overseas holiday (that I did a ton of pre-reading for) coupled with recovering from a virus I caught while abroad, but for two months I couldn’t find a single book I wanted to read more than 50 pages of. It got to the point where I was starting to question whether I was just finished with reading as a hobby or maybe I never actually enjoyed it as much as I thought, then I wondered if I had some kind of post-viral brain damage. I must have gone through 20-100 pages of at least a dozen books, desperately trying to find the one that would fix me. I’m typically a mood reader so then I wondered if it wasn’t a form of anhedonia, could I actually get enthused about anything anymore? Anyway, it resolved itself a couple of weeks ago as I guess these things usually do with time. I suppose I have to accept that sometimes I just won’t be feeling it and that’s okay, but I always feel there’s something missing in my life if I don’t have a book on the go that I’m excited every day to spend time with.
Thank you for sharing about this problem. I went through it during COVID and was shocked since I had been a life long avid reader.
Listening to books was my escape hatch. As you say reading and listening do have their distinctive features but in terms of meaning-making they are more similar than not:
I hit the worst slump of my life in early 2024 and still haven't recovered. I usually read all the time, 150+ books a year, but between the election and my husband's unemployment and then he did get a good job but the election didn't go how I hoped and now the world is on fire -- well, I can manage fluffy mysteries and re-reading childhood favorites and that's about it. I want to read lots of heavy-duty tomes of history and politics, and it's just not happening. I have to make myself pick up the 600-page Victorian thriller I'm working my way through right now (and enjoying!); 3 years ago, I would have done it in a week. I keep trying to accept that life is just too difficult right now to also be trying to read like I normally would. Bring on the fluff!
Especially appreciated the perspective on motivations for reading- thank you! (I tend to indiscriminately read whatever is in front of me —&/or whatever catches my interest—and suspect that contributes to fatigue in a different way.)
I hope you feel better. When I had Covid I also couldn't read or do anything, my brain just shut down. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things. Get well soon.
This is such a refreshing take on reading slumps! The distinction between audiobooks as passive vs active reading really gets to something important most people miss. The cognitive load difference isn't a weakness, it's a totally separate entry point for engaging with writen material. I dunno if we talk enough about how flexibility in format can actually save someone's relationship with books entirely when life gets overwhelming.
Reading out loud is easier than reading silently when I get bouncy eyes. Thankfully I have a passel of children clamoring to be read to at all times, but even pretending to be an audiobook narrator does the trick. I am also a firm believer in reading multiple books at a time, so you can read the book you are drawn to in a particular mood or setting. If I have a mystery, a nonfiction, a classic, a book of poetry, and an audiobook going simultaneously, I always feel like reading something. Tonight I noticed the torches to light the way in the fog in Christmas Carol because we had just been reading about the link boys in Tom Hawke. Those sorts of organic connections enrich the text.
If we're readers, then this whole guilt trip starts - especially when there are multiple TBR stacks, right? I had to join (well, not join, but make myself do it) The School of the Unconformed's Reading Rebellion method - "One Book. Two Weeks. Repeat" just to start actually making a dent in the wonderful books that I acquire. The OBTWR method's working, so to be derailed by flu/sinus infection/Cvd is so aggravating, hence rereading the strangestloop manifesto linked above...
Great tips. I experienced the very thing May describes during COVID and couldn't understand it for a while. But it was poetry that pulled me out first, then returning to easy children's books and fiction.
The only time I hit reading fatigue was during my PhD when I was pushed to my limits. Reading outside of academia is such a pleasure now and I still prefer the physical book in my hand. But I mix it up between different forms of literature as much as I can. Reading is a transportive activity to another realm 😍
Warning: Reading fantasy while developing a high fever will produce delirious dreams. I did that to myself recently, read The Golden Compass as my fever spiked. As I started to drift in and out of illness-induced sleep, I got trapped in endless loop dreams of scenes from the book. 0/10, do not recommend.
On reading fatigue, I try something else first, then wait it out. After all, I know my own brain well enough to know that it needs time to fully process information in order to retain it. The more time it has in processing, the better I willl remember a book.
I do watch films when my brain is too exhausted to comprehend the printed word, but watching films isn't mindless entertainment for me, it is exercising a different part of my brain. While I watch, I am thinking about the soundtrack, story arc, camera and acting technique, special effects, etc. Using modern technology's ability to skip forward and back seamlessly, I will often watch a narrative non-consecutively, as I find it hard to concentrate on linear story lines in film - I actually enjoy films more that way. I seldom get lost in a movie, I often get lost in a book.
For me, saying that you just don't feel like reading is equivalent to saying that you just don't feel like breathing. It is true that occasionally I have been so sick that I am unable to read. But an audio book or a podcast can prevent ennui -- or at least put me to sleep which is probably what my body needs.
Thanks for this post! I am such an inveterate bookworm that I mostly am entirely free from book fatigue and usually am experiencing the opposite issue – never feeling like I have enough time to read all the things I'm dying to read. That said, in 2018, when I was evacuated due to wildfire and spent several weeks breathing dense smoke and constantly refreshing fire news to figure out if my house had burned down, I did lose the ability to read for pleasure. I just could not do it. My entire life, I have read before falling asleep at night. I couldn't do it. When Covid happened, it coincided with recently leaving my job and not having, shall we say, economic clarity about the future. I tried to read Hilary Mantel's final book of the Wolf Hall trilogy that spring, and it was like hail bouncing off the windshield of my mind. Could not do it. Which brings me to say that at least in my case, when I can't read, it's a sign of extraordinary stress elsewhere – it's a sign of exhaustion, worry, and overwhelming awareness of it huge impossible, externality far beyond my control. And in that regard, it's a weird sort of blessing – a red flag posted by my mind that deep gentle care is urgently needed.
I’ve just come out of one of the worst reading slumps I’ve ever had. I blame it on the emotional comedown of just having just arrived home from an overseas holiday (that I did a ton of pre-reading for) coupled with recovering from a virus I caught while abroad, but for two months I couldn’t find a single book I wanted to read more than 50 pages of. It got to the point where I was starting to question whether I was just finished with reading as a hobby or maybe I never actually enjoyed it as much as I thought, then I wondered if I had some kind of post-viral brain damage. I must have gone through 20-100 pages of at least a dozen books, desperately trying to find the one that would fix me. I’m typically a mood reader so then I wondered if it wasn’t a form of anhedonia, could I actually get enthused about anything anymore? Anyway, it resolved itself a couple of weeks ago as I guess these things usually do with time. I suppose I have to accept that sometimes I just won’t be feeling it and that’s okay, but I always feel there’s something missing in my life if I don’t have a book on the go that I’m excited every day to spend time with.
Thank you for sharing about this problem. I went through it during COVID and was shocked since I had been a life long avid reader.
Listening to books was my escape hatch. As you say reading and listening do have their distinctive features but in terms of meaning-making they are more similar than not:
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/31427396/?utm_source=perplexity
I hit the worst slump of my life in early 2024 and still haven't recovered. I usually read all the time, 150+ books a year, but between the election and my husband's unemployment and then he did get a good job but the election didn't go how I hoped and now the world is on fire -- well, I can manage fluffy mysteries and re-reading childhood favorites and that's about it. I want to read lots of heavy-duty tomes of history and politics, and it's just not happening. I have to make myself pick up the 600-page Victorian thriller I'm working my way through right now (and enjoying!); 3 years ago, I would have done it in a week. I keep trying to accept that life is just too difficult right now to also be trying to read like I normally would. Bring on the fluff!
Especially appreciated the perspective on motivations for reading- thank you! (I tend to indiscriminately read whatever is in front of me —&/or whatever catches my interest—and suspect that contributes to fatigue in a different way.)
Taking a long walk or doing yardwork usually works for me. After physical activity, I look forward to diving into some reading.
I hope you feel better. When I had Covid I also couldn't read or do anything, my brain just shut down. It took me a while to get back into the swing of things. Get well soon.
This is such a refreshing take on reading slumps! The distinction between audiobooks as passive vs active reading really gets to something important most people miss. The cognitive load difference isn't a weakness, it's a totally separate entry point for engaging with writen material. I dunno if we talk enough about how flexibility in format can actually save someone's relationship with books entirely when life gets overwhelming.
Reading out loud is easier than reading silently when I get bouncy eyes. Thankfully I have a passel of children clamoring to be read to at all times, but even pretending to be an audiobook narrator does the trick. I am also a firm believer in reading multiple books at a time, so you can read the book you are drawn to in a particular mood or setting. If I have a mystery, a nonfiction, a classic, a book of poetry, and an audiobook going simultaneously, I always feel like reading something. Tonight I noticed the torches to light the way in the fog in Christmas Carol because we had just been reading about the link boys in Tom Hawke. Those sorts of organic connections enrich the text.
Needing to read but don't wanna: https://strangestloop.io/essays/things-that-arent-doing-the-thing
If we're readers, then this whole guilt trip starts - especially when there are multiple TBR stacks, right? I had to join (well, not join, but make myself do it) The School of the Unconformed's Reading Rebellion method - "One Book. Two Weeks. Repeat" just to start actually making a dent in the wonderful books that I acquire. The OBTWR method's working, so to be derailed by flu/sinus infection/Cvd is so aggravating, hence rereading the strangestloop manifesto linked above...
Great tips. I experienced the very thing May describes during COVID and couldn't understand it for a while. But it was poetry that pulled me out first, then returning to easy children's books and fiction.
Read children's books.
The only time I hit reading fatigue was during my PhD when I was pushed to my limits. Reading outside of academia is such a pleasure now and I still prefer the physical book in my hand. But I mix it up between different forms of literature as much as I can. Reading is a transportive activity to another realm 😍
Warning: Reading fantasy while developing a high fever will produce delirious dreams. I did that to myself recently, read The Golden Compass as my fever spiked. As I started to drift in and out of illness-induced sleep, I got trapped in endless loop dreams of scenes from the book. 0/10, do not recommend.
On reading fatigue, I try something else first, then wait it out. After all, I know my own brain well enough to know that it needs time to fully process information in order to retain it. The more time it has in processing, the better I willl remember a book.
I do watch films when my brain is too exhausted to comprehend the printed word, but watching films isn't mindless entertainment for me, it is exercising a different part of my brain. While I watch, I am thinking about the soundtrack, story arc, camera and acting technique, special effects, etc. Using modern technology's ability to skip forward and back seamlessly, I will often watch a narrative non-consecutively, as I find it hard to concentrate on linear story lines in film - I actually enjoy films more that way. I seldom get lost in a movie, I often get lost in a book.
I’ve always read a lot, but that has always included times when I hardly read at all. I’ve always been OK with that.
For me, saying that you just don't feel like reading is equivalent to saying that you just don't feel like breathing. It is true that occasionally I have been so sick that I am unable to read. But an audio book or a podcast can prevent ennui -- or at least put me to sleep which is probably what my body needs.
Thanks for this post! I am such an inveterate bookworm that I mostly am entirely free from book fatigue and usually am experiencing the opposite issue – never feeling like I have enough time to read all the things I'm dying to read. That said, in 2018, when I was evacuated due to wildfire and spent several weeks breathing dense smoke and constantly refreshing fire news to figure out if my house had burned down, I did lose the ability to read for pleasure. I just could not do it. My entire life, I have read before falling asleep at night. I couldn't do it. When Covid happened, it coincided with recently leaving my job and not having, shall we say, economic clarity about the future. I tried to read Hilary Mantel's final book of the Wolf Hall trilogy that spring, and it was like hail bouncing off the windshield of my mind. Could not do it. Which brings me to say that at least in my case, when I can't read, it's a sign of extraordinary stress elsewhere – it's a sign of exhaustion, worry, and overwhelming awareness of it huge impossible, externality far beyond my control. And in that regard, it's a weird sort of blessing – a red flag posted by my mind that deep gentle care is urgently needed.