“Never force yourself to read a book that you do not enjoy. There are so many good books in the world that it is foolish to waste time on one that does not give you pleasure.”
Atwood H. Townsend, Good Reading
I’ve been MIA lately, and I apologize for that. I’d like to have a really good excuse, but if I’m being honest, I’ve been enduring a pretty intense reading slump. I dread reading slumps. It makes me feel terrible when I know that there’s all of these amazing books on my To Read list and I don’t want to read any of them. Even worse is when I start a book and find no enjoyment in it.
For years, I refused to give up on a book. I was of the opinion that to do so would make me miss out on some amazing literature because I wasn’t able to power through. That’s true to some extent. There are definitely books that I wasn’t in love with at first that I grew to appreciate after I finished. Gabriel García Márquez’s masterpiece A Hundred Years of Solitude was one of those books. It took me a long while to get into it, but as I read the last sentence and closed the book I was profoundly grateful that I’d stuck with it.
But if I’m being honest with myself, those books are few and far between. Most of the books that I didn’t like in the beginning did not improve upon further reading. I can’t tell you how I wish I could get back the hours I spent reading Wuthering Heights. (Actually, I read it twice because I hated it so much that I was convinced there was something about this classic that I’d missed. “It must be a classic for a reason,” I thought. “Maybe I’m just too ignorant to appreciate it. I should give it another read.” If possible, I loathed it more the second time around.)
I was well into adulthood before I gave myself permission to stop reading books that I wasn’t feeling. And even though I’ve told myself I’m allowed to give up on a book, I still struggle with it a bit, especially when the book is a recognized classic. Case in point: I was reading Crime and Punishment for longer than I probably should have before I returned it to the library. I wanted to like it. So many of my friends have given it five stars on Goodreads. It honestly makes me feel a little stupid to not like a book that everyone else raves about. And this isn’t a Wuthering Heights situation where I hated the book and to heck with everyone else. This is a case in which I was just bored out of my mind and was wondering the whole time what everyone else saw in this book. So I pushed on and got increasingly irritated with Dostoyevsky.
I caved eventually. I have a friend who often paraphrases Atwood H. Townsend’s quote. She says, “Life is too short for bad books.” Now, that’s not to say Crime and Punishment is objectively a bad book. I’m sure it has a lot of really great qualities. But it wasn’t what I needed then. It wasn’t what I was looking for, and I wasn’t getting any enjoyment out of it. Reading, even serious reading, is supposed to be joyful. So I walked away from Raskolnikov and his guilty conscience, and I’m at peace with that decision.
Having left Dostoyevsky to other readers, what was I to read instead? Enter: the reading slump. I borrowed books from the library and returned them without even cracking them open. I downloaded audiobooks and listened to ten minutes before sending them back. Nothing I picked up could satisfy me. It was like I was searching for one book in particular but I didn’t know what it was or how to find it.
I wish that I had some words of wisdom about how to get yourself out of a reading slump. I’ve seen other blogs have posts that tout different methods of turning things around. Personally, that doesn’t jive with me. I think reading slumps, infuriating as they can be, are healthy. They give me time to listen to a podcast, to try a new TV show, or to do some research on a topic that interests me. Books are a way to learn, but they aren’t the only way to learn. And every reading slump ends eventually. Soon, out of the blue, you’ll find a book that makes your heart sing as you turn the pages. I’m currently reading the last book of Deborah Harkness’s All Souls Trilogy, and I’m devouring it. My reading slump is officially at an end . . . for now.
So put down that book that you feel obligated to push through. (Unless it’s for school or something. Then do your homework.) Embrace your reading slump. Explore other interests for a while. The books will always be there when you’re reading for them again.
Happy Reading! (Or not!)
