10 tips for a reading rut
How to reignite your love of reading this autumn
Autumn’s in full swing now. The clocks have turned back, Halloween’s long gone and now we’re all just counting down the weeks until Midwinter passes and the days start getting longer again. I don’t know about you, but I’m already dreaming of winter sun, wishing I could escape the cold, dark London evenings for a trip to Southern Spain, Morocco, or maybe even further afield.
I’ve just reread Katherine May’s brilliant book Wintering and am trying to take her advice and embrace the end of the year, but it’s hard. I can’t pretend I love it when the sun goes down at 4:30, taking with it my ambitious plans for an evening run, and it’s a real struggle to gear myself up for a dinner in Soho when my body’s telling me it’s time to wind down for the day. But that’s precisely what May teaches us in Wintering: rather than continuing to live as we do in summer, simply adding a coat or scarf to the same outfits we wore in September and gritting our teeth as we head out to the pub, run club or post-work drinks, we should learn to treat winter as an entirely different beast. This is the season for cold water swims in the mornings and cosy evenings spent snuggled up on the sofa with a book.
Which brings me to the point of this post: autumn reading. A few people have told me recently that they’re in a bit of a reading rut, and I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I appreciate Pandora Sykes’s sentiment when she says that “books should not be siloed into times of year”, but I believe it can be helpful to adjust our reading habits with the seasons too. In the summer, we’re too busy making the most of the sunny evenings to read on weeknights, and we crave compulsive beach reads on our holidays. While I love an August afternoon in the park with a book, I definitely reach for lighter, character-driven novels, full of colour and possibility. In September, I feel like most people are just racing around, dealing with the ‘back to school’ energy while trying to make the most of the long evenings. By October, we’re starting to spend more time indoors, but we don’t necessarily remember how to entertain ourselves. Speaking for myself, I spent far more time on my phone in October than any other month this year, and I read the least amount of books. I don’t want these bad habits to continue for the rest of the year.
So when friends ask me how to get out of a reading funk, I now suggest adapting to the season and their mood. Craving cosiness? Read a beloved, old classic. Feeling bored? Why not try an escapist novel, something that you wouldn’t usually go for. There’s been some amazing TV recently (also not a coincidence), but I’m here to help you get back into reading before the long, dark winter ahead. You won’t complain so much about the quiet nights in when you’ve rediscovered your love of a good book, I guarantee it.
Reread an old favourite
If you’re struggling to get into the big Booker Prize novels you keep forcing yourself to get through, I’d suggest reacquainting yourself with an old friend. When I was younger, I used to reread the Harry Potter novels at Christmas as a treat, but you might have another favourite you’ll never get bored of. Some people turn to Jane Eyre, One Hundred Years of Solitude or The Great Gatsby. It doesn’t have to be a book you first read as a child, but nostalgia can be comforting at this time of year. The point is that this is a book (or series) that you’re reading purely for your own enjoyment, not to race towards your Goodreads goal or get through a particular prize’s shortlist before the winner is announced. These attainment-based goals will suck the joy out of reading and are far more likely to cause a slump than a return to Wodehouse or Jilly Cooper would. This would be the perfect time to reread Rivals, now I think about it…
Read something short
That said, if your Goodreads goal is stressing you out, it can also be quite satisfying to whip through a few slim volumes or novellas to remind yourself that all hope is not lost. From my own collection, I’d suggest Caleb Azumah Nelson’s two novels, Open Water and Small Worlds, as well as Rebecca Watson’s Little Scratch and I Will Crash, which are no less brilliant for being relatively ‘quick’ to read, Jeffrey Eugenides’s The Virgin Suicides, Max Porter’s Shy and Lanny, Annie Ernaux’s A Man’s Place or something like L’Étranger which you were hoping to get round to one day anyway. I also reach for poetry collections when I’m in this kind of mood.
Read a short story or essay collection
While we’re on the topic of short books, why not try a short story collection? I quite like picking up a book and reading one or two stories, rather than forcing myself to read the whole volume, or you could download the New Yorker and read a story on the bus instead of scrolling. Some of my favourite short story writers are Tessa Hadley, Zadie Smith, Chris Power and Katherine Heiny. Essay collections can also help inspire you. I read Durga Chew-Bose’s Too Much and Not the Mood in one sitting, while Leslie Jamison’s The Empathy Exams is perfect for dipping into when you want to read some masterful prose. It can be liberating to remember that you don’t need to read the whole thing at once.
Read a comfort book
Earlier, I dismissed chick lit as summer reading, but there’s an adjacent category of cosier comfort fiction that’s better suited to the autumn and winter months. Think Elizabeth Strout, Catherine Newman, Joanna Canon and Matt Haig: their novels are still comforting and uplifting, but they’re a bit more subdued than the Reese Witherspoon selections, with their big characters and dramatic plots. Again, this is the time to remove all snobbery or self-consciousness and just pick up a book that you know will make you feel good. While I didn’t rate them particularly highly, I’m grateful to Jacqueline Wilson’s Think Again and Matt Haig’s The Life Impossible for reminding me of the simple pleasure of reading for reading’s sake when I was feeling down recently. India Knight shared a great comfort reading list recently.
Read an immersive epic
On the other hand, you might want something all-consuming to get you out of your reading funk. This is not necessarily the time for realism, but for fantasy, sci-fi or historical fiction. You’ll want a book with brilliant world-building, clever structure, a strong sense of voice or a suspenseful plot; this book should get you out of your head and maybe even keep you up past your bedtime. Some novels which I found myself unable to put down include The Bee Sting by Paul Murray, Demon Copperhead by Barbara Kingsolver, This One Sky Day by Leone Ross, The Love Songs of W.E.B Du Bois by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers, In Memoriam by Alice Winn, The Fraud by Zadie Smith, Kala by Colin Walsh and Martyr by Kaveh Akbar.
Embrace the winter mood
This is the perfect time of year to lean into cold, dark novels. Think Scandi Noir, Gothic thrillers or spooky horror stories. Save the hot, sweaty stories for the summer and curl up by the fire with a chilling read. Some classic choices which may also qualify as rereads include The Secret History, Fingersmith (get your hands on one of the beautiful reissues) or Rebecca. In translated fiction, I’d recommend Mariana Enríquez, Selva Almada, Meiko Kawakami and Lukas Rijneveld, whose books are chilling and unsettling, even if their settings are not explicitly wintery. There are also authors like Claire Fuller, Douglas Stuart and even Sally Rooney, who are better suited for the darker months.
Read with a friend or a book club
There’s nothing like community to get you reading again. While Wintering encourages us to spend more time indoors, that doesn’t mean you have to isolate yourself; the season is already lonely enough. In Iceland, where there are only a few hours of sunlight in the depths of winter, there’s a huge culture of reading and community. On Christmas Eve, there’s a tradition called Jólabókaflóð, which literally translates as ‘Christmas book flood’, in which people exchange gifts of piles of books and snuggle up to read them by the fire. Autumn is the perfect time of year to set up a book club, gathering every few weeks to share your thoughts on a book. In the sauna at my yoga studio last week (another essential wintering activity), I was invited to an informal book circle, where they pass around copies of old Booker Prize winners. Reading requires some solitude, but it doesn’t have to be a lonely activity; some of my most cherished friendships have been made and maintained through the simple joy of talking about books. It also brings me so much pleasure to share my tips with you on here!
Listen to an audiobook
My favourite hack for getting out of a reading rut is to stop trying to read and listen to an audiobook instead. When my attention span is suffering and I feel too stressed/anxious/busy/overwhelmed (insert current predicament) to focus on the words on a page, I like to download a new audiobook and listen to it when I’d usually turn to music, radio or podcasts: on my commute, on a run, while tidying my flat. I started listening to audiobooks again in the summer and found myself getting through about one a week. I also prefer to listen to so-called ‘easy’ books, rather than anything that requires my full attention span, so I quite enjoy the indulgence of a thriller or chick flick that I might not read otherwise. This is when I’d turn to Richard Osman or Marian Keyes, as well as titles by authors like Elizabeth Day, Dolly Alderton, Jay Shetty and Mo Gawdat whose voices I’m already used to listening to on podcasts.
Give up on your current book
Returning to the message of self-compassion in Wintering, it’s a good time of year to release some of the pressure you’re putting on yourself. If you aren’t enjoying your current read, just give up on it. Who’s holding you accountable? It’ll be much better to start a new book that you know you’ll love than to continue trudging through the same dry chapter for the next month. If your current book club choice is dry, why not give up on it and take the opportunity to listen to what the rest of the group has to say about it? We’re not at uni any more; no one’s going to tell you off if you haven’t finished the reading list. Reading is supposed to be fun! We all have dozens of books on our TBR (To Be Read pile) that we’ll never get to, so please don’t waste any more time reading books you don’t like. There’s something so satisfying about a DNF (Did Not Finish) because it’s a sign that you’re putting yourself first.
Go to a bookshop!
Lastly, why not take a trip to your favourite local independent bookshop? Books are expensive, but you don’t even have to spend anything: you may be inspired enough by the books on their shelves to go home and pick up something off your own bookshelf. Or why not join a library and rent some titles there? Sometimes, all you need is a bit of novelty and some fresh inspiration. When I’m feeling sad, I always drift towards the Foyles on Charing Cross Road, and nothing makes me more excited to get home and under the blanket than a fresh new hardback. Guilty as charged!
Still stuck for ideas? Let me know what you’re in the mood for and I’d be happy to recommend a few books you might like. And if any of these suggestions help you break your reading rut, I’d be overjoyed to hear what you pick up.
Thank you for reading this post - I hope you enjoyed it!