Let’s Talk Bookish: What Are the Best Ways to Get Over Reading Slumps?

Hello everyone! I hope you are all doing well! Today I’m finally back with another Let’s Talk Bookish, a weekly meme hosted by Rukky @ Eternity Books and Dani @ Literary Lion. I haven’t been able to participate in over a month, but I’m excited to be back! Today’s topic is about reading slumps.

For those who don’t know, reading slumps are times when a person does not read as much because they aren’t motivated to start a new book. I don’t typically have a lot of reading slumps, but the ones I do have usually occur when I am busy or preoccupied with other things. For example, when I was having health problems earlier this year, I didn’t read as much. I also have been in a little bit of a slump early this month, mostly because I have been really busy seeing family.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having reading slumps. Reading books can be stressful sometimes, and it can be hard to be fully invested in other worlds when you are worried about real-life things.

That being said, I do believe there are some things that you can do to get over reading slumps. I even did a post about this last year. Usually, I just allow myself to take a bit of a break from reading, until I feel motivated enough to pick up a new read. This motivation often comes from seeing blog or Goodreads reviews of books on my TBR.

Another way I’ve found that sometimes helps me get over reading slumps is to check out library books. This doesn’t always work for me, but I find that I am much more likely to read a book if I have a deadline to read it by. And since library checkouts do not last indefinitely, going to the library and checking out about five or six books to read in three-ish weeks helps me to feel motivated to finish books.

I also find that reading books outside of my normal “comfort” zone helps me to get back into reading. The majority of books that I read are in the YA contemporary category. While I really enjoy reading these books, every once in a while I get bored, and I have to read different kinds of books. Usually this means reading fantasy or middle grade (which helps me for my Middle Grade Mondays series). Reading something different and getting invested in a different type of story can often help me out of slumps. Anthologies can also be useful for this, as they can also help you pace yourself by only reading a story or two at a time.

I also find that the things I do in reading slumps help lead me back to reading. I’ve talked about this a bit before, but juggling reading, blogging, and writing can be really hard. Reading slumps give me a lot more time to write and blog because I’m not using up so much time to read, but eventually I run out of things to blog/write about. I can’t write book reviews if I haven’t read anything new, for example. This forces me out of my reading slumps.

However, there are many other ways to get out of slumps and it’s perfectly okay if you need a break from reading! There’s a lot of pressure to read as many books as possible, but it’s impossible to read every book. Taking breaks from reading can be healthy.

What do you think? What do you do to get over reading slumps? Let me know in the comments!

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