The Book Nerd’s Guide to Reading Slumps

Try Short Stories or Graphic Novels
If switching genres doesn’t help, dabbling in other formats and narrative styles might do the trick. The bonus for short stories is that they’re shorter (obviously), and thus more digestible in snack format. Instead of staring down a daunting 600-page read, you can breathe a sigh of relief when you see the light at the end of 40 pages. Likewise, graphic novels allow you to consume a story in a totally different way. I can zip through a Lumberjanes in about the time it takes me through the first chapter of my latest book club read. They’re nice snacks that can ease some dyspepsia.
Re-evaluate Your To-Read List
Now is not the time for Infinite Jest, or some other monumental undertaking you’ve been steeling yourself for. It is a fool’s errand when you’re not 100 percent in the game. Just as Odysseus doesn’t make it back to Ithaca without the stirring passion for his wife, Penelope (or the vague blobby outline of the woman he sort of remembers Penelope as, anyway), you can’t return to the shores of your bookish safe haven without some crackling biblio fervor. Now might just be the time to try that nonfiction pick your sister’s been pushing on you for months. If you have someone who can talk to you with great devotion and enthusiasm about a book, it increases your chances of enjoying it by some scientifically undetermined percentage.

Change Your Scenery
The name of the game is changing your reading psychology. Try a new coffee shop. Read at a different time of day than you typically do. Swap out your reading chair. Speaking from experience, I’ve never had such a mood booster as finally assembling a big, comfy chair that, to get home, I had to take out of the box in the IKEA parking lot and place in strategic pieces inside my car. By the time the slipcovers are on, and you get that coveted first sit, you’ll be in a good head space, ready for the reward of leisurely reading a gothic romance.
Burn Down Your Book Goals
I, like the rest of you, set reading goals for myself each January. Coincidentally, each January, I tremendously overestimate the number of hours allotted to me in a day. (For the record, I’m one book behind schedule on my reasonably reduced 70-book goal, and I’m not one bit ashamed.) Look, ambition is good. Without ambition, we have no books. But racing toward a reading goal is one of the surefire ways to burn yourself out. I shouldn’t need a Kanban board for my leisure time, and I shouldn’t be plowing through a novel, so I can get to the eight behind it in the queue. If you want to reset your mind and make reading great again, you need to set fire to your hard-and-fast, self-imposed challenges. As in most things in life, you can easily become your own worst enemy. In fact, I think a read a book about that…