Fall Back in Love With Reading (+ Helpful Journaling Prompts)
Did you have a reading fort in your childhood bedroom? I made mine out of blankets and pillows, and it was the coziest space to curl up with the latest Nancy Drew mystery. But as an adult with responsibilities that compete for reading time, I don’t always feel that same wonder, immersion, and presence as I once did.
Just like our writing life, reading ebbs and flows too, and it’s helpful to get curious about what you might need, especially if you feel like your reading is in a rut. Wherever you find yourself today, naming and noticing will be our themes as we explore. Ultimately, the ideas I’m sharing today aren’t so much about reading more, but making sure that reading meets us where we are right now.
4 Questions to Ask When Reading Feels Hard
Before we start, know that you don’t need to answer all the questions unless you want to. As you read, just notice which ideas might make you perk up a little bit and start there.
Q: What are you reading and why?
I listened to a podcast episode of What Should I Read Next with Anne Bogel, and she had a guest on who was struggling with something that I think many of us do from time to time—this idea of, "Well, I should be reading this book because everybody seems to be talking about it."
A lot of times those books are in the very serious fiction category, including big-name writers or books getting a lot of buzz. Maybe they're in different Bookstagram accounts, and through our own narrow lens of who we follow on social media, we feel like both everyone is reading it, and we should also be reading it.
But why? Is it so I can seem intelligent? So I can bring it up in conversation? So I can say, "Oh, I know that one"? It's worth thinking about, especially because reading should be pleasurable. And that’s always my tip-off: If I feel like I should be reading a book that I’m ultimately not enjoying, it’s worth reconsidering.
In my most recent reading rut, which was sometime in 2024, I decided to cancel my subscription to Book of the Month because it was fueling this feeling of not keeping up with the books I ordered. At the time, my own answer to this question of what I was reading and why would have been: I’m reading mostly books that are on ‘most anticipated lists’—new titles with buzz and big marketing budgets, and I’m reading them because I think I should.
Q: What genres do you like to read?
Next up is another question: What genres do you like to read? There are dozens of genres, and probably hundreds of sub-genres. And because there are so many to choose from, it’s helpful to drill down a little bit. If you like historical fiction, for example, what specifically in the genre do you enjoy or not enjoy? I personally gravitate towards stories from the Gilded Age, so about the 1860s onward, up through the 1950s. When I was able to identify this, it felt really exciting because ultimately, it helps me make decisions about what I want to read next.
It’s helpful to know what you don’t like, too. I won’t pick up war stories, for instance, unless it’s adjacent somehow. As someone who tends to be more sensitive, especially when it comes to news and visually seeing violence of any kind, I don’t need those images in my brain.
I also love a happy ending! In 2020 or 2021, I started devouring rom-coms, contemporary romance, books that escaped to locations I couldn’t travel to and where some stakes existed but everything worked out in the end. I was all about comfort reads for a long time. This felt really safe for my nervous system during a period of chaos. Wanting to feel good can be another great reason to read a book.
If there’s a particular genre you enjoy, maybe make a list in your notebook about what specifically you like, and qualities you look for, or types of stories.
Maybe you want family dramas set in remote locations.
If you read contemporary romance, which tropes do you like best? Enemies to lovers? Second chance? Forbidden love?
Maybe you love stories in academic settings or books about bookstores.
Maybe it’s a main character who can time travel.
Maybe it’s memoirs that explore a particular topic you’ve experienced personally.
Maybe it feels good to read the collected works of an author you really love or just recently discovered.
Get curious and specific, and then it might be fun to build a bit of a reading list with this new awareness.
Q: Do you experience reading seasons?
Another question, more like a sub-question: Do you experience reading seasons? You can start with that list of favorite genres, and consider if you read them year-round, or if you gravitate towards certain types of books during the year.
You might love a classic beach read in the summer, tuck into longer novels in the fall. It might be fun to recognize if your reading life has any of these seasonal elements. You might also notice that if you’re in the middle of writing a book, you gravitate towards a completely different genre or type of book during that time.
Q: Is there something you’re anticipating?
To end our sub-question list, I want to suggest reading to support something you might be anticipating. I think this is especially wonderful for travel of any kind. Big trips, small trips, if there’s something on the calendar where you’re leaving town, it can be really fun to read books that boost your excitement, or help you look forward to the location you’ll be, or help you learn something about where you’ll be going.
I did this last year before a trip to Italy and it made the experience so much richer because long before we arrived, I’d been reading cookbooks and memoirs about the country as a whole but also some of the specific locations we’d be visiting.
You also might be able to do this with something like a wedding you’re attending. There are so many fun wedding books out there. Even if there’s a movie adaptation coming out, read the book first (if you haven’t already).
I’m sure there are a lot more examples but I think the point of this idea is to find ways to make reading really fun and something to enhance other things you might be doing in life.
Considering Our Relationship to the Library
If we’re talking about reading for pleasure, we have to discuss our relationship to the library, because these incredible institutions can be amazing resources, but things can also get out of hand, as I personally know. I’ve shared this story in my newsletter before, but a while back, I found myself in an unhealthy relationship with my local library. It started innocently enough where I enthusiastically added books to my holds list and picked them up when they came in, but my waitlist was long, like the max number of books allowed, and books were coming in all the time.
I started feeling behind, overwhelmed, and as I’m sure you can imagine, reading started to feel like a chore I would never finish instead of something to look forward to. Once I hit my breaking point, I started giving myself 30-50 pages of a book and then having no problem giving it back if it wasn’t the right fit for me.
I also did a better job at curating my wait list, removing books I didn’t feel like I wanted to devote myself to. I’ve also started delaying my holds to activate on a certain date. I do this around the holidays, or before a vacation, or anytime where I want to pull books from my own shelf. Knowing books aren’t going to be coming in from the library is really helpful to refocus when I need it.
Libraries, of course, are amazing, but sometimes we can have too much of a good thing so use your judgment and think about how you’re using your card and if there's anything you can shift.
I recently had an experience where all my waitlist books were on hold for a while so I could start reading the books I actually own at home, but my son wanted some new books for his break so we went in there and, it’s like going to the grocery store without a list and you end up with impulse buys, right? I walked out with two books for ME. One of them I took back pretty quickly but the other I was really glad I found so, like everything, loads of self-compassion as you experiment.
How to Balance Research and Pleasure Reading
Another issue that I find can really impact my reading life is the quest to balance research and pleasure reading. This can happen a lot if you’re working on a project. I know for my memoir, it was a long road and I did research at various points of the process. And by research, in part, I'm talking about reading other memoirs that might be either comp titles, or reading them to look at structure or how other people have treated a certain experience.
My stack of books in this category—especially about pregnancy, pregnancy loss, and mental health—was starting to get quite long. Because I was writing about the experience for myself and then simultaneously reading about it from others, it sometimes felt like too much for my nervous system. When this happened, I found it really helpful to temper it with something very light like romance. I also tried to be mindful of where I was in my cycle and the writing process, plus my mood of the moment, to make conscious decisions that wouldn’t derail my mental health.
In short, if you’ve read two or three research books in a row, mix it up with something totally different. Maybe read some poetry before bed, or find a fun podcast to listen to. That will help you stabilize and you can still have momentum while giving yourself a mental break too.
Journaling Prompts to Go Deeper
If you’d like to journal a bit more about your reading life, here are the big picture questions and topics we covered so you can have them handy all at once. First, 4 questions:
What are you reading and why?
What genres do you like? (And get specific within the genre)
Do you experience reading seasons? And what does that look like for you?
Can your reading support an event or a trip you’re anticipating?
And then, three idea buckets:
You can consider your relationship to the library
The balance between research and pleasure reading
Finally, discover the tracking style that works best for you, including considering a commonplace journal.
At the end of the day, I can’t imagine a life without reading. I still have memories of snuggling up in my little reading tent I made in my room, and feeling so warm and safe in the pages of a book, or walking in the stacks of my local library. But like anything in life, we can sometimes feel stuck, or in a rut, or less enthusiastic than we used to be, and when that happens, there are always gentle ways to pull ourselves back in and reflect on what we need.
I like how Anna Quindlen describes it, saying: “Books are the plane, and the train, and the road. They are the destination, and the journey. They are home.”
