Conquering a Reading Slump (Hopefully)

I woke up this morning and was accosted by the sight of my bedside table, where a pile of books swayed precariously. One wrong move and they could’ve toppled down onto my face, threatening me with paper cuts, bruises from an unwelcome hardcover, or the accidental transfer of a loose Barnes & Noble 50% off sticker onto my forehead.

A pile such as this builds up occasionally, and they’re almost always a sign of one thing: I’m in a reading slump. A reader’s worst nightmare–but it happens to everyone at some point or another.

Now, there are typically two things that I will do to get out of a reading slump:

1. Re-read a book that I love

2. Read a new book that absolutely hooks me

Unfortunately, neither of those seemed to work this time around. I recently re-read Pierce Brown’s Red Rising in hopes that it would ignite a desire to read more science fiction and fantasy. While I enjoyed the book and had a fun time recollecting plot points as the story progressed, I reached the end of the book and felt no further away from the reading slump than where I began.

So, I was on to method two. After much hyping up from the internet and my mom, I sat down to read Atmosphere, the latest novel from Taylor Jenkins Reid. And WOW… what a book! I was immediately hooked, and I began reading it in any spare moment that I had. I even started leaving for work extra early just so I could sit in my car for twenty minutes and read another chapter before going into the office. 

Usually that kind of reading experience is enough to pull me out of the reading slump and drop me back in my comfortable routine. But for some reason, this time it didn’t work. If anything, it made the reading slump worse, because every book I picked up after that didn’t seem to live up to Atmosphere.

Hence the pile.

Over the last few weeks, I’ve picked up book after book after book after book, hoping that something will hook me. Speculative fiction, romance, history, epistolary novels, travelogues, fantasy… I’ve tried a bit of everything. I’ll pick up a book, read the first 50 pages or so, and then put it down. Then the next time I sit down to read, I’ll pick up that same book, find myself disinterested, and then start reading something new. It’s an endless, stupid cycle. 

Now, my brain is screaming at me. Every time I flip open the cover of a new book, my subconscious yells, “Stop! You need to finish all the other books, psycho!” But with every book I add to the pile, the more intimidating it gets, and the less likely I am to actually finish reading anything in the pile.

So the pile must go!

Putting the Pile on Pause

Well, the pile must go… but in a “I’ll see you books later!” kind of way. Thankfully, there’s a tool to help me with that.

I am an avid user of the website Storygraph, an alternative to Goodreads that offers a lot more features and a website that doesn’t feel like it exists permanently in 2013. Of all the awesome features that Storygraph introduces (quarter star ratings! buddy reads! customizable stats!), one of my favorites is the Pause option. This is a nice, non-committal alternative to DNF: three letters that strike fear into the hearts of many readers. 

Marking a book as DNF, or Did Not Finish, feels like a death sentence. And that’s not to say that I don’t DNF books. I won’t hesitate to DNF a book if I don’t like it. But that’s the problem: I do like all the books I’m reading. I want to finish them. I just can’t find the motivation right now to do it, but I need to do something about the ever-growing pile.

So the goal is this: pick one book from the pile that I’m going to read right now, and then Pause the rest. Easy!

Well, I should also probably do something about the metaphorical piles of partially read e-books and audiobooks that have built up over time. So I’ll do the same with those: slim down the piles until I’ve just got one of each.

Slimming Down

I can comfortably read around three books at the same time–but there’s a catch: they have to be in different formats. Typically, I’ll have a book that I’m reading on my Kindle, an audiobook that I’m listening to, and then a physical book. The system feels reminiscent of Rory Gilmore and her need to have a book for the bus, a book for lunch, a backup lunch book, etc. Each book serves a different purpose.

The audiobook is for when I want to listen to a story while I’m otherwise occupied: grocery shopping, cleaning the house, driving to work, and so on. The e-book is for times when I want to read, but carrying an actual book would be inconvenient, like a plane ride! E-books are also perfect for reading really long books, because there’s nothing that I hate more than the arm workout that is holding open a bulky 800 page novel. And then a physical book is for every other moment: winding down before bed, passing time during my lunch breaks, lingering in coffee shops, etc.

So, bearing all of that in mind, I’ve slimmed down my piles (physical and digital) to three books.

Audiobook: Lucky Day by Chuck Tingle

E-Book: The Will of the Many by James Islington

Physical Book: I Who Have Never Known Men by Jacqueline Harpman

Fingers Crossed, Knock on Wood, Etc.

All that’s left to do now is read and hope that this whole process worked. Maybe I’ll tear through all three books in a week, maybe one will stick and the others will gather dust for a while, maybe I’ll get distracted and end up binge watching TV instead of reading at all. Only time will tell!