HOW TO OVERCOME READING SLUMPS

A reader's worst nightmare. They are the worst. They can come out of nowhere. Other times it's actually the book you're reading that's the problem. You can find yourself in a serious funk and you just don't feel like reading at all. Other times you try. And try. But no matter how many books you pick up, nothing seems to be working. It happens to everyone. You are bound to experience multiple reading slums throughout your reading life. Sometimes you're lucky and they only last a few days. Maybe a couple of weeks. But other times these can last for months. Maybe even years in the worst case scenarios. And so I thought I would share with you today some tips and tricks, some things that I do to help me get out of reading slumps. And hopefully some of these might be a little helpful for you next time you find yourself in a bit of a reading slump. First step, stop reading. Put the book down. Whether this was the book that brought on the reading slump or maybe you've tried to push through a little bit, just stop and take a bit of a break from reading. Depending on the seriousness of the reading slump, I find that taking a break from reading is the best thing that you could possibly do to get over the reading slump. Take some time to do something else like binge watch a TV show, have a movie marathon or spend a few days playing The Sims or any other video game of your choice. Listen to some music or just do something productive like cleaning your room. I usually opt out of that option. Dedicate some time to doing anything else apart from reading. Usually this break will give you that much needed time to get over whatever reading funk it is that you're in and eventually make you miss reading so that you find yourself excited and ready to jump back into the reading world. So for any of you that are in a reading slump, start here. But if you feel like not reading isn't actually helping and it's a much deeper issue, you might need to start actively encouraging yourself back into reading. Test the waters a little bit. Try just reading a few pages or even a couple of chapters from a range of different books and see if anything jumps out at you and takes your fancy. In doing this, I would definitely recommend choosing from short, easy, even fluffy or fast-paced books. You don't want to try and read anything too thick or too dense because that's just going to make the slump that much deeper. Read what you know. Reread a book. Pick up your go-to book or series that you know you will love and you'll know you'll continue to love no matter how many times you reread it. If you don't feel like rereading, then try picking up a book from one of your favourite authors that you haven't actually read yet or even pick up a sequel to a book series that you enjoy. Get out of your comfort zone. Try picking up a book from a genre that you haven't read much of recently. Sometimes I find that reading slumps are genre-based. You're just reading too much of one type of book. Sometimes you might need to be a little more extreme and if you read a lot of YA, maybe try and dabble in a bit of middle grade, adult fiction or even non-fiction. Alternatively, try reading in a different format. If you read a lot of physical books, maybe try reading that particular book on your e-reader or phone or tablet, whatever device that you have that can support e-books. For me personally, I think that listening to an audiobook is a great solution because instead of reading a book, you can listen to it and you can generally listen to it when you have other things to do like driving, cleaning, doing the dishes, mundane stuff or you could try reading somewhere new. Spice up the location a little bit. Instead of just sitting on your bed or on your couch like you normally do, go onto your balcony or front porch and chill out there or even go to the park or the beach. If it's nice weather like it is here, it is actually ridiculously hot right now, I would love to read. Taking yourself into a new environment and reading could be enough. Build excitement. Stray away from your TBR. It might be the choices of books that you have available to you that's restricting you a little too much. Instead, go to your local bookstore or your library, have a browse, see if there's anything that jumps out at you, maybe pick up that book that you've been dying to read for so long but just haven't had the chance to yet. Just make sure it is a book that you are generally really, really excited to read. Maybe try joining a book club or participating in some read-alongs or even readathons. By surrounding yourself with people that are in the mood to read, that might be enough to build up your excitement again. You don't have to do this alone and especially if you have a little bit of a competitive nature, reading alongside other people might give you enough of a kick. Another way to surround yourself with people that are passionate and excited about reading is to take the booktube. If you don't know anyone in real life, then take to the internet. There's an abundance of us here. If I'm in a reading slump, I often find that this is accompanied by me not watching many booktube videos. So go ahead and watch other people rant and rave about books and you never know, it might just rub off on you a little bit. Start to really push yourself. If taking a break from reading or nudging yourself a little here and there wasn't enough to get you out of your slump and you feel like you might need to push yourself a little more, you might have to get a little more crafty. Maybe try and set yourself some reading goals or daily quotas. This could be a daily page or chapter amount or you might even set yourself a goal to finish a book or a certain amount of books within a set period of time. If you do well under pressure or having deadlines keeps you really motivated, then this might be really helpful to you. And maybe even give yourself a reward every time you do accomplish one of your goals. Keep this a really positive experience. So those are some of my tips for overcoming a reading slump. I hope that some of you found these helpful. If I'm being totally honest, I myself am in one of the biggest reading slumps of my life, I think. It's been about five months so far and it doesn't feel like this slump is going away at all anytime soon. So I also wanted to open up this discussion to you guys and if you have any tips or tricks for getting over a reading slump, I would love to hear it down in the comment section below. Personally, I haven't been able to take a proper break from reading due to uni requirements, so I think that's what's prolonging this reading slump for me, unfortunately. But I want to see if any of the tips that you guys have to share would help me out a little. Anyway, that is all that I have for this video. I hope you guys enjoyed it. Thank you so, so much for watching. Ticket says keep reading! Bye!