graphic courtesy of GReads
TGIF at GReads is a feature for recapping the week’s posts and answering a book-blogging question posed by Ginger. I try to join in from time to time when I have some interesting thoughts on the question at hand.
This week the question is: Reading Blues: We all get them from time to time. What helps you overcome those reading slumps when nothing seems to grab your attention?
This question comes at a great time because I am (sort of) in the middle of reading slump. I went on a library hold request spree a month or so ago and as the holds pour in, I find myself not wanting to read books that I know I would actually like… if I was in the mood for them. You see, I didn’t believe it was possible to wear myself out on dystopia or other sorts of action-y or sci-fi books. But I think I might have overdone it. Because all I want to do these days is watch baseball. Or go to the gym. Or clean. I know, I might be losing it.
So what do I do? Well, I didn’t finish one book, returned another to the library without reading, and put another library book down in favor of watching baseball and reading a romance novel (On the Island) I bought last month, but hadn’t read. Then I went to the library and picked up another adult romance (Attachments) which I’m nearly halfway through. I guess a change of genre was all I really needed to get me back to the books!
I also want to address how blogging has played into my reading slump, though. Before I started blogging, I probably would have let my interests wander and would have happily taken advantage of my increased interest in exercising and scrubbing the bathtub. Maybe I would have taken the opportunity to reread Harry Potter or even just taken a break from reading for a few weeks. Now that I blog, though, I want to keep putting out reviews, which means I need to be pretty much constantly engaged in a book or two. I am perfectly happy to read more (that was one of my goals in starting this blog), but another of my goals in starting a book blog was to read better. That is, to be happier with what I read and to read more things that I actually like. So I am giving myself to permission to read what I like, consequences be damned! Hopefully that, in and of itself, will keep me out of another reading slump.
What do you do when you hit a reading slump? Has blogging played into how you handle them?
And here are my previous posts of the week, should you be interested:
Don't Take My Books Away 