We have all been there – the dreaded reading slump. You burn yourself out reading too much or you’re distracted by other things, and boom! Suddenly you can’t decide on a book to read, nothing is holding your interest, or you just can’t get very far in your current read.
Reading slumps don’t hit me too often, but when they do they are really terrible. It usually starts when I cannot figure out what I want to read. I get this weird panicky feeling as I stare at my bookshelf. Then I’ll start a book and will be unable to get more than 20 pages in, so I pick up another and another and another. Eventually, I’ll give up and just wont touch a book for a long period of time. It feels weird and very strange, but nothing I try to read will hold my interest.
I tend to get this way when I read too much from a single genre and get burnt out or when I’m under a great deal of stress in my everyday life. My last really bad slump hit when I was working on my masters degree – I just couldn’t bring myself to do anything except play video games and watch TV when I wasn’t working on assessments. Over the years, however, I’ve learned how to spot a slump coming on and can usually stop it from happening by doing the following:
- Pick something completely different to read, particularly if I’ve only been reading one genre exclusively
- Slow down! Don’t try to power through more books than I can handle
- Do something completely unrelated to reading as a break
I’ve always been a big reader, but I’ve been tearing through books at an incredible speed ever since I started this blog in January. I’ve already more than doubled what I read at this time last year – I’ve read 44 books so far in 2017. I’ve been extra aware of my mood as I read, and I can feel a slump coming on now. I’m trying to tackle this with a combination of reading some nonfiction as a change of pace and spending more time doing other things like watching TV. I’ve been reading so much that I could probably go a week or two without picking up a book and not run out of reviews and blog posts!
So I ask you, dear readers:
- Do you ever get hit with reading slumps?
- How do you break out of them?
- Are you paranoid like me and look out for them?
- What are the best books to get yourself out of a reading slump?
I feel like this is something book bloggers face all the time: let me know what you think and how you deal with the dreaded slump!
I Should Read That 
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