Have you ever lost your reading mojo?
Letters of OpinionReader Opinions43 Comments
I received this email and I thought a lot of readers might feel this way. With Roma’s permission, I’ve republished it for response.
Forgive me if this is not appropriate, but I wondered if it was possible to tap into the collective wisdom of the dear author world to help me answer an issue that is really starting to terrify me: Have you ever lost your reading mojo…and did you ever get it back?
Some background; I have always been a keen reader. Romance is a special favourite, but I also love biographies, adventure, history, cereal packets, leaflets…pretty much anything. I start to panic a little if there is no reading matter to hand (digital books have saved my back!)
Early last year I started to notice that I was not enjoying reading as much as before. Initially I attributed this to reading new authors / genres that I would normally, then the fact that I was busy with family / work. However this lack of enjoyment has persisted for over a year now. I started to worry that it may be more of an issue than I first realised, when I started reading the latest releases from my favourite autobuy authors and I still was not interested. Objectively they contain all the elements that would usually thrill me. I can describe the characters and plot points that would normally have me thinking that was great / how unusual, I love what the author did there/ ooh that was romantic. I can recognise these moments but I cannot *feel* them like I would do normally.
It is really beginning to upset me; reading has always been such a deep and ingrained part of me that I rather feel lost. I am able to read non fiction (magazines / educational items/ essays/ journals etc) with the usual level of enjoyment. I have tried new authors/ old favourites/ new genres but it makes no difference. Even re reading old favourites feels…meh. I am refusing to touch them at the moment in case my happy memories are replaced.
My sincere apologies if this has been inappropriate. I am just quite distraught and I would love to hear if anyone else has ever experienced this and if so, how they recovered from it.
Thank you,
Roma
This happened to me a few years ago. I couldn’t bring myself to read anything in the end. Now I’m reading more than ever. It feels horrible at the time, and I honestly think the worst thing you can do is force it. If you’re not feeling it, don’t read. Take a break. I barely picked anything up for about 4 months, during that time reading maybe 2 books by long standing, most adored authors. And like you Roma, I didn’t ‘feel’ them. I gradually started reading again, if something really appealed to me, often totally different from what I’d read previously, but still on a very small scale. Prior to my break from reading, I think it had been about a year of reading through habit rather than desire. Gradually my enjoyment returned. As did my desire for more to read. While my tastes have changed in the past few years, I can honestly say I read more, markedly more, than before my enjoyment waned. So my advice, if you want it, is take a break. Don’t force it. If it’s not enjoyable, let it go. It’ll come back, given time. But sometimes, no matter how we love something, a break is needed. Don’t let it make you sad, it’s just where you are right now and there is nothing wrong with that, or with you. It’ll come back, just give yourself time.
There have been a couple of times in my life when I just stopped reading for fun–my last couple of years in graduate school and then for almost a year several years back. I teach literature, so I had to keep reading at least enough to do my job, but otherwise I didn’t have any interest in picking up a book. The first time, my life circumstances changed, and I got back into reading slowly after I began a book that my friends were talking about. I read that book mostly out of curiosity and so I could have conversations with friends (I didn’t really enjoy it), but it got me going again. The second time, I started thinking about one of my favorite authors, so I randomly picked up one of her books to reread it. I suddenly remembered why I loved reading, and I ended up rereading all of her books (more than 20). Then I reread all the books by one of my other favorite authors, and then another. It was a while before I started reading new books, but at least I was reading again.
I think we go through different stages in life, and they don’t all look the same in terms of reading. Sometimes we just need to focus on other things, and sometimes we get burned out on our normal genres so we really just need something new. I agree with Claire above that forcing it isn’t likely to help. If I’d tried rereading my favorites earlier, it probably wouldn’t have worked the way it did. Once reading becomes a source of pressure, it will be even harder to love it again.
On a day to day basis, when I’m having trouble on focusing on reading or writing, I make myself put away my tablet and phone. Facebook and Candy Crush make my mind work in a way that’s really an obstacle to the way I need to think to read and write well. When I put the devices away, I find that I crave the deeper engagement that comes from a book. But I think this is primarily a help on a daily basis and not for a situation like yours.
I will say that times I wasn’t reading, I didn’t feel like my whole self, so I can totally sympathize, and I hope you eventually rediscover your love for reading.
Hey Roma, I did loose my reading mojo and went from “devouring” between two and three hundred books a year to zero – and it lasted close to two years. I even went so far and sold a lot of my paperback favourites because I thought I left this “romance phase” behind me. A few years later I invested a lot of money to re-buy my favourites in digital format LOL. Nowadays, with so many digital freebies and bargains out there, I find it very easy to become steamrolled by the “next new great trend”. I myself am quite a picky reader and I DNF my fair share of books and am rather stingy with A and B ratings, but I am easily seduced by a gorgeous cover and a cheap price – even if the reading experience can only be equaled in an average C grade. Back in the early 2000s when I “only” read erotic romance on a PDA and otherwise needed to find my books in paperback format, reading sometimes seemed to have more value and I found myself treasuring the next book more. I am trying very hard nowadays to find this “treasure feeling” again in my books. I review them carefully before I buy them, and I try to avoid the 0,99€ buys when I am not sure about the plot. I am barely able to tolerate a C read nowadays because in the back of my mind I can still feel this “reading slump” lurking due to the sheer amount of books that all want to be read. I am honest and say that I am stressed when I see so many new books that I simply “have” to read because everyone enjoys them. As in many other areas, too, speed and quantity have long found their way into the business.
Don’t worry about your reading mojo – let it rest for now, watch great TV series and do Pilates like I did LOL. It will come back, probably when you least expect it.
I know exactly what you mean. I get this with certain genres every few months or so, and have to leave them alone for a while and read something else. Trust me, don’t force it. Just read things you ARE enjoying, and soon you will be desperate to read the genre again!
I’d agree with Noelle. I’ve found, by chance really, that as little as a week offline will turn me back into a voracious reader again. It’s worth a try if this is really worrying you, and if that’s a realistic possibility.
(I’m old, and more relevantly a luddite, so I’ve no phone or facebook to miss when I go offline.)
I spent a couple of years where I was only reading a few favorite authors, all of whom are dead, so no new releases at all. I just couldn’t get any enthusiasm up for anything but comfort reads, and at times not even them. For me it was due to factors outside reading (chronic illness, stress, depression), and once those things started to improve I started slowly getting my mojo back and getting interested in books I saw reviews of.
Oh, goodness yes. This happens to me periodically, usually riding the back of stress and/or SAD (“winter blues”). I tend to snap out of it in a week or three, and use the time to catch up on those movies or tv shows I’ve been meaning to watch.
One thing that often helps me out of the slump is a really well-read, unabridged audiobook of an old favorite. Being able to close my eyes and hear the story come alive in someone else’s voice often makes me hungry for the printed word again.
I share Roma’s pain. When my husband decamped (nearly four years ago) I stopped reading. Dead. Simply could not read a thing, and I was previously a reader of at least two to three books per week. I put it down to depression but still, now, my mojo has not fully returned. Now it takes the form of picking up a book, avidly reading the first four chapters or so, then putting the book down for months at a time. I’ve kind of got over the worst by reading ‘shorts’, and things outside my usual Romance genre. I got heavily into crime/suspense for a while and was reading those books at my old pace, but I’m still having a bit of a problem with romance… Husband was the ‘Love of My Life’, so a lot of my problems come from just not feeling the HEA any more. Sigh.
Wow- everything that was said above by previous posters has applied to me at some point or other. Right now, despite suddenly living by myself and having so much more alone time, what I thought would be a wonderful opportunity to read day and night has turned into a bit of a slump. But I do know, from past experience, that my interest will pick up again. And I still rely on audiobooks in the car so I haven’t totally lost my reading mojo ! I understand Roma’s terror though- so much of the way I define myself is through my joy of books and reading.
I’ve gone through this also at various times. I agree with the advice to not push it and focus on something else for a bit.
I want to say also that there is life after being a serious reader. I used to read several books a week and always, always had a book going. Now I read maybe 20-30 books a year and it has been that way for maybe five years or so. I just don’t have the desire to read as much.
I don’t mean this in a snarky way and I know it is difficult when you first experience it, but truly it isn’t the end of the world. Life changes and you’ll adjust. Again, I don’t mean that in a nasty way but just saying that I’ve been there a few times and now I’m just not the reader I was but that is o.k.
I lost my will to read during treatment for breast cancer. I just couldn’t sink into a book at all. I couldn’t lose myself, maybe because my reality back then was so crappy. I tried enticing myself with all my auto buy authors, new books, paper books, etc but nothing worked. It took about a year. Finally my health returned and so did my love of reading.
I think the key is to maybe accept it, don’t panic and know that it will likely return. When I over-thought it, I made it worse.
There have been I have had books just waiting on my reader by authors I know I love but I just cant seem to find the desire to read them. Sometimes a change in genre works other time I have found myself doing Sudoku and Kakuro games doing times I would normally read.
Evidently this ends and I am back reading but whether its because of a book hangover or just a feeling of disinterest it seems to happen more frequently.
I’ve been through the slump too, more from life than from an actual meh, although I did find that when I wasn’t reading much due to life that the books I did read were less liked. I don’t know if it’s like exercise – when you’re doing it more, it feels better? Maybe.
But I got back into reading by a massive genre switch. From almost exclusively romance, I went to reading very little, and then I went to science fiction. I worked through John Scalzi and Jean Johnson’s “Theirs Not to Reason Why” series, plus a bunch of straight up mysteries, and that enabled me to come back to romance and appreciate the genre fresh.
I don’t know if your switching genres was that level of switch, or if it was subgenres of romance. But perhaps sci fi is the answer?
I went through a period of not reading when I was pregnant with my first child. I just couldn’t find anything that kept my interest or that I really loved. It took me about a year to snap out of it (also it was AFTER I had my baby and suddenly had plenty of time to read during late night feedings. It was right around the time of the YA dystopian uptick, when Scott Westerfeld’s UGLIES series came out. I read those and it kicked me right back into my love of reading. All I know is that it will come back to you. Hugs.
This has happened to me a couple of times over the years. The longest down time was after my final exams — three years of obscure 16th and 17th century pamphlets and sermons resulted in a complete inability to read anything whatsoever, even easy, entertaining novels. I gradually found my way back (and even branched out into a couple of new genres at that point).
Two other times have been similar to those mentioned by others: following heath issues, medical treatment, stress due to other factors. Audio books worked well for me, too, during these periods — the voice was easier to focus on, and there was less going on in one’s own head than when reading the printed page. I took up knitting socks as a way of distracting what was left of my attention. The finished pairs were in great demand, so I didn’t even end up with a mountain of unwanted socks!
Anyway, give it time, don’t try too hard, and one day, that door will surely open again.
YES! This has happened to me, back when I blogged. I wasn’t reading for fun anymore, it was a chore. I stopped blogging, and started reading for fun again. Best thing I could do. Now, I share my love of the books that I truly enjoy with friends, or on my own pages. I write reviews for them, but is nice not to have the blogging pressure! Good Luck, I hope you get your Reading MOJO back soon!
My romance reading mojo is gone. It’s been gone for a long time. I’m an avid reader of non-fiction, especially Canadian, Edwardian, and Victorian history; biographies and autobiographies (rock stars, golfers, royal families); and magazines such as MacLean’s.
I hope to get my mojo back since I can still re-read my go-to romance oldies such as Johanna Lindsey, Catherine Hart, and Rosanne Bittner. Don’t feel alone, Roma. Sometimes I wonder if I’ll ever read romance again. Maybe it’s why I started stopping by the dear author blog a few months ago. I read the reviews, news, first page, etc. It makes me fee like I’m still participating in romance.
@Jane Lovering:
Jane Lovering, you said “… a lot of my problems come from just not feeling the HEA any more. Sigh.”
I’m at a point in my life where I read all romance as fantasy, even when there are no magical creatures, talking trees or other fantasy elements. I have to suspend all disbelief, period, in order to accept the romance genre at all. I remind myself it’s fiction, imagination, just something somebody made up. I’ve never seen a HEA in real life, but maybe it can exist in fantasy, along with unicorns and dragons. (Your post struck a chord with me, and I hope my response doesn’t offend.)
I went through this a couple of years ago and am still struggling in some ways. It’s very easy for me to get excited about a book and start to read it only for it to fizzle and then for me to put it down and never finish it. And the books are generally very well written and fairly interesting…but like Roma, I’m just not feeling it.
Changing genres helped me somewhat but mostly, it’s been switching from reading to listening that helped me. Instead of needing to find time that I can curl up with a book, I can listen to them while accomplishing other things. It took me awhile to come around to audiobooks but now I love it and it relaxes me even as I keep busy while listening. I don’t enjoy listening to romance but many of the books I do enjoy have romantic elements to them.
My favorite recent listen was Andy Weir’s The Martian which was a hoot!
Oh yes, it all sounds very familiar to me.
It all began between the time when I had my second and third child. Maybe it was because of sleep deprivation, maybe it was because of stress, but I found myself going from a life when I always had two or three books going at once (anything from classics to mystery/suspense to historicals and women’s fiction, mainstream literature). By the time my third child arrived I had stopped reading completely. I found no joy in it anymore. No stories or characters could move me the way they used to.
For more than three years I read absolutely nothing (except for reading required for my work which was mostly non-fiction). Instead I took up sewing. I started off with children’s clothes and worked up to more advanced women’t clothes.
And then suddenly one day I was online looking for some information regarding a BBC TV-series for my children when I bumped into some online fanfic. And just like that my reading mojo returned.
As it had once disappeared it now slowly returned and over time, a year or so, grew stronger and stronger, until it is what it is today. Now I always have a book I’m reading and a bunch of books waiting to be read (thank you, my ereader) I still find it had to focus on more literary fiction and instead focus on romance and historical romance. Best of all, reading is fun again. It has now been almost four years since the reading mojo returned. In case it leaves again, which I hope it won’t, I guess I can always go back to sewing.
A retired librarian friend of mine once told me that “reading was so much more delicious when I didn’t really have time to do it.” But aside from being retired…I think reading, like any other interest, ebbs and flows depending on what else is going on in your life. I often find it hard to sit still long enough to read, but I devour audiobooks while I’m folding laundry or driving around town.
I read once (possibly on this blog, actually) that your favorite books are the ones that show up at the right moment in your life. During those weird lulls when we don’t seem to find anything good to read, I think we’re just not coming across the right books. Sometimes we outgrow authors or genres. Sometimes our long-favorite authors go in directions we don’t want to go. In high school, I couldn’t get enough historical romance; now I’m reading a lot more contemporary and romantic suspense and mysteries in general. Authors I used to love just don’t do it for me anymore; we’re not in the same place. But I’ve found new authors that make me happy.
I think this goes for reviewers, too. There are some reviewers (and book magazines) I no longer follow because I never liked anything they liked. It isn’t that they were recommending bad writing; we were just in different places.
Good luck with finding your mojo!
I definitely felt at times that I am tired of one genre (I abandoned romance for years and first couple of years when I started reading mm I have read tons of it), but jumping in another genre usually helps a lot – so I never experienced not wanting to read anything you know?
This has happened to me both with the romance genre and reading in general. When it was reading in general, I took some time to watch TV and work on other projects. Thankfully that only lasted for a few months.
When I got in a huge reading slump a few years ago, I tried reading old favorites. I am a big rereader so this worked to some extent. I also read a lot of biographies and autobiographies. Eventually I read a new-to-me author’s romance and enjoyed the book and that reignited my interest in the genre. I think I just had to give my mind a break for a while.
I’m starting and ending with a question for everyone, then getting to my comment: Do you’all think it’s possible to reach a limit–a reading limit–for a particular genre? I’ve been seriously wondering if that’s what happened to me. Like I’ve mined all the romance tropes and characters and plot points and that’s it. Done?
Now, my comment:
Thank you Roma (and Jane) for sharing your experience because I am going through this too. Other commenters have mentioned the causes for losing reading-mojo, like major life events or work/life stresses. I, too, have lived through those periods in my life. But, I’m coming up on a year now of not feeling my usual drive to read, and not enjoying the books I have read. And, it’s not because of some outside event in my life. Work, kids, the husband, all good. No health worries. It’s not any of that.
What I can point to about this time last year is that I had a horrible experience with a book (from a major, much-loved-and-discussed-by-DA author….not some untried newbie), and it killed my reading mojo. Like no kidding. For about 4-6 months I literally couldn’t finish a single romance or detective or SF novel. Like a too-strong spice, the heroine/hero of that mojo-killing book overpowered or drowned out everything else I picked up and tried to enjoy. So, I did what others suggest. I just quit reading fiction.
Last fall I started reading again, but still I’ll DNF about not quite half of the books I pick up. I NEVER used to DNF a book. Audio-listening has helped get me hooked with some new-to-me authors.
But, I’ll repeat the question I began with: Can you hit your limit in a genre? Can you get to a point where you say I can’t read another kindergarten teacher meets Navy SEAL? or, no more YA for me? Or…well, you get the point. There’s a lot of common plot/character devices in the kinds of popular fiction I (used to?) love. I used to find some comfort in falling into a well-written (if over-used) romance plot. Now? Meh.
I don’t know. Sometimes I think our consumerist culture makes us think we have to be consuming constantly, but breaks and shifts in interests are normal and often healthy, I think. I went through a very long dry spell after college. It took years before I really got back into reading a lot again. During that time I read magazines, then turned to mostly NF for a while before I rediscovered my love of fiction. Romance was a genre I left behind when I graduated from high school. I didn’t return to it until after ereaders and ebooks became common. I also turned to other interests, such as gardening.
@Kate L, I certainly think it is possible to hit your limit in a genre. Tastes often change over time, and sometimes gaining particular knowledge can alter the way we engage with a particular genre. If you know the trope well enough to predict the plot twists, it can make the story much less compelling.
Like several other commenters, I lost my reading mojo for an extended period while I was going through some life difficulties. I found it easier during that time to enjoy short stories and novellas. I did not need to wait as long for the story arc to play out, and I was able to feel a vicarious sense of satisfaction/achievement more often with a short story anthology than with a single novel.
I pretty much quit reading when I became a published author (30 books ago). I read non-fiction now, if I read at all. One problem is time: I work full-time in a day job and I try to write at least 2 or 3 hours a day on my fiction. There’s always another book to work on, another idea to develop. So I just don’t have time.
I’m also a critical reader, and so many books just don’t catch my attention or engage me. Can’t tell you how many “recommended reads” I’ve picked up and put down. I think perhaps my tastes have changed and I’m no longer willing to suspend disbelief, the way I used to.
I doubt if I’ll ever return to it the way I used to, unless it’s in a totally new genre (although I used to read across all genres, before being published). There are times when I miss it, but I enjoy writing so much and enjoy developing my own stories and getting lost in my own books, that I don’t miss it much.
Like everyone else, I, too, have lost the mojo at times (this past six months being one of those periods). For me, the causes aren’t external (family issues, etc.), it’s just burn-out. I mostly read romance (historical being my first love, but also some contemporary and paranormal). Last year I started feeling like so many were just chasing the trend of the last mega-seller, which was bothersome because some of those breakout books weren’t my taste to begin with (so the copycats really left me depressed).
I took a long break and am just now starting to dip my toe back into the pool. It would be great if something blew my socks off (which is why I troll this site and a few others looking for the scoop on new books). Perhaps it would be easier if I knew what I was really hunting for, but I don’t. I guess I’m just hunting something really unexpected and heartbreakingly good. I probably won’t get super excited to read volumes of material again until I find that gem that kick-starts my engine.
Don’t get depressed, though. Use your free time to experiment with a new hobby or adult ed class or cooking really awesome meals (always satisfying!). Maybe changing up your routine will eventually bring you back to reading. Good luck!
Thank you so much to everyone for taking the time to share your thoughts on this subject. It has been hugely reassuring to know this has happened to other people too and that they got through it. Wonderful too to read that even if it stayed, that was ok. I have some fabulous suggestions to help restore my mojo that I am looking forward to trying out. I think I have been trying too hard to force things, so a change of activity will probably be first on my list. I would also like to add that losing my interest in reading, amongst other symptoms, also prompted me to see my family doctor and as a result I have been diagnosed with a thyroid disorder. I don’t know yet if treatment will help, but if this resonates with anyone please do think about having your health checked too. Thank you again everyone xx Hugs xx
I was going to add my audio books and magazines as toe dipping back into the pool idea and also say how lovely it is to hear other lovers of books share how they’ve found it frightening to be in a dry spell (I’ve had two, multiple year periods). It makes me even more grateful to have this community close at hand. Because we can share both the love of reading and hopefulness when enjoying that love is failing us. Thank you Roma & DearAuthor.
@Roma: I went through a bad reading slump about a year and a half ago. I tried switching up genres which had helped a lot in the past but this time it was only partially effective.
Eventually I figured out the cause– too much reading on a schedule. Not only was I reading for DA, where I feel a responsibility to pull my oar and post reviews every so often, and also to review books close to their publication dates if at all possible, but I was also reading with my husband ( we read to each other out loud in the evenings) and many of the books we read were library books and had to be read by the due date. What it boiled down to was too much of my reading was regimented, and I didn’t feel free to read what I wanted, when I wanted anymore. Reading had become a chore. I had to cut back on reading with my husband, adding more flexibility to my reading schedule, as well as to introduce one or two genres I hadn’t read in a while into my reading mix, in order to be able to feel enthusiastic about reading again.
I too have lost my mojo at different times and, like others, was able to reignite my interest by reading other genres. I’ve also done this at times when, as KatieL mentioned, I’ve reached my limit with a certain genre.
My biggest reading slump occurred during a traumatic period on my life at which time I was eventually diagnosed with Bipolar Disorder and other mental health issues. I affectively stopped reading for over 3 years. An avid reader since I was a toddler, this slump was incredibly depressing. It was as if there was a hole inside me that couldn’t be filled with any other hobbies.
I’ve only just started reading again at the end of last year. It was whilst reading one of Jane’s reading posts that a book mentioned caught my interest. I investigated, book the book, loved it, read the sequel and that was it. I’ve been on a book binge ever since. It’s awesome.
Your mojo will come back, Roma. I’m certain of it. It’ll just take a little time. :)
@Kate L: I think you can reach a trope limit, but I would think reaching a limit on a genre like romance would be hard to do since the genre encompasses so many sub-genres. Same with reaching a limit on fiction all together.
I can see needing to take a break from reading. But even in my worst slump I think I’ve only gone 6 weeks without reading a book. But I generally read/reread 200+ books every year and have for over 30 years. (My least reading year was 1996 with 142 books and the most so far was 2014 with 323). I don’t know what I would do if I couldn’t read.
That said. I uses to finish every book I started. Now I am much more inclined to DNF a book or at least set it aside if it’s boring me. If a book is not keeping attention, but it’s by an autobuy author, I will set it aside to try again later. If not an autobuy author, I will skip to the end and read the last few paragraphs. Based on that I will either decide to try again later (not the norm, but has happened) or – usually – either put it in the donate box (if print) or delete it from my device and Calibre (if digital). If it’s part of a series, I might keep it in Calibre just to have for reference in case I need it.
As I got older I decided my time was worth more than reading a book I wasn’t enjoying. But I am also a mood reader, so I know that just because I can’t get into a book at the moment doesn’t mean I won’t enjoy it later when I’m in a different mood. So it’s been a bit of trial and error to learn when a book is a lost cause on me and when it’s a try later. But I am a firm believer in the right to DNF.
I used to (not uses).
I should clarify my reading totals include rereads which is something I do a lot more of during reading slumps.
The only things that get me out a slump are not reading for a while, reading outside of romance (though I tend to do this a little bit every year anyway), or rereading old favorites until a much anticipated book is released or trying new-to-me authors until something sparks. It’s never quite the same thing every time that brings me out of a slump.
Tuning in late here but my experience echoes a lot of others, when under periods of extreme stress and/or depression I have lost my reading mojo. Not completely but there have been times I have retreated to wallow in my comfort reads and stayed there for extended periods of time because thats all I could mentally process.
In a related note at the same time I experienced a loss in my creative mojo for my photography much more severely and was unable to even pickup my camera for months, this was particularly noticeable after our major Feb22 earthquake 5 years ago.
My experience is acknowledge that its there, and that its happening and that you recognise that, and then leave it alone. It will come back naturally of its own accord, and by stressing yourself trying to force it, you will only make it worse.
Good luck and hang in there, it can’t be fun and I wish you best of luck!
I am not sure, but I wonder if the possibility of reaching a ‘limit’ may depend what sort of reader you are. Some people, I think, read for novelty. They like plot twists they aren’t expecting, characters they haven’t met before, different tropes. I suspect that these are the readers who would be horrified by spoilers and wouldn’t ever dream of reading the end of a novel first. I can certainly imagine that if you’re this sort of reader, you could get to a stage of feeling that a particular genre or subgenre is feeling stale and tired, and doesn’t have the same appeal for you any more.
I mostly read for familiarity. I love to re-read. There are some books that I’m on to my third or fourth paper copy because I’ve read them literally to pieces. One of the things that most appeals to me about the romance genre is its reliability. I like to know where books are going so that I can enjoy the ride. So, I would be surprised if I ever get to a point of having read to my limit in the genre. Of course tastes change and develop. I used to read a lot more detective fiction than I do now, for instance, but I still enjoy it when I do read it. I don’t know if romance will always be the dominant genre in my reading, but I’m pretty sure it will always have a place.
Adding my two cents to say that I have definitely burned out on genres, not only romance but definitely including romance. I’ve never stopped reading fiction, but I’ve reached limits on mystery, romance, and lit fic, where I had to read other genres (or just read less of everything). Sometimes it’s because of other things going on in my life, but those periods have been matched by the times I read even more books than usual to escape stress, grief, etc. I always come back, but in the interim I read other genres, or watch more films and TV series, or pick up a completely different hobby (like knitting).
One thing that leads to my reader fatigue is reading too many books that I don’t enjoy. After a while I dread picking up another book because I don’t want to go through the experience yet again. Ironically, I think that being enmeshed in the romance community makes that kind of streak more likely, because apart from the way reviewing structures my book choices, I will read books because my reader friends are talking about them and I want to join the conversation. When I realized the pattern and stopped reading books because they had buzz, my satisfaction increased overall. I miss being in on the conversations, but my actual reading experience is more enjoyable.
@Roma:
On the more prosaic too, have you had your eyes checked lately? My biggest slump turned out to have been because my vision was getting worse and while I wasn’t consciously aware of straining, it was dramatically reducing my enjoyment.
Interesting questions. I have definitely lost my reading mojo at different times in my life–in grad school when no one could pay me enough to read one more ruddy word than I had to after reading my assignments, and, oddly, during the worst part of my marriage and for about 2 years after my divorce. I had a serious concentration problem and I kind of wanted to be around media that was more like “old friends”–movies I’d seen 100 times etc. I think it was a subconscious avoidance of being subjected to surprise emotions. I also go through periods where I won’t read any published works and will instead read all the Sookie Stackhouse or P&P fanfiction I can gorge myself on. Not sure what that’s about :)
WIth respect to can you get to the end of a genre? Totally! I know I’ve sent emails to friends saying “I found the end of the internet” when it’s happened to me. I think it’s just easy to feel like this is the same story, different setting, different character names. I get really excited when someone suggests something I hadn’t tried before and discover I love celeb romances or seals or hockey players or whatever and then I go deeply down the rabbit hole trying to find what I personally deem to be satisfactory attempts at the trope or genre. I’m very free with DNFing for quality/interest reasons. Life’s too short to read everything–if I’ve made a poor selection, I’m usually pretty good about owning it and putting it down.
One thing that is a deflater of my reading mojo is picking up too many poorly written novels in a row. It’s just exasperating. I’ll usually do a non-fiction palate cleanser on a topic I think I might rabbit hole for fiction next. In fact, just this last month, I got to the “blah, blah, blah, vampires, blah” and picked up a book about the Iraq war that was fabulous. Now I’m reading sexy military romances ;) Go figure.
This too shall pass. In the meantime, have a cuppa and binge watch a little something.
I went through this a from 2006-2008. I found I was getting horribly tired of my favorite authors and re-reading my favorites. I started skimming books, couldn’t get interested in buying books at the bookstores because I couldn’t make it past a page, and felt more like I was going through the motions.
So I stopped. Books piled up and I stopped, and I’m a devoted reader. I have always had piles and bookcases of books in my house and reading everyday voraciously since I was 4. All through school teachers caught me ignoring lessons to catch up on the lastest thrillers, romance and scifi. At work I would scramble to get to the lastest book I was caught up in on break and felt like I had to peel away…must. have. more. money. to. afford. books.
But stress, job changes, family and health issues and just a lack of interest killed my joy of reading. Not my love of reading, just my interest. I worried for a long time that the books I’ve loved and the ones on my TBR would go to waste because there was just NO way I was going to ever get interested again (my thoughts at the time).
I’d read on Lynn Viehl’s blog that keeping a journal helped her through her days and was therapeutic. So I started keeping a diary and I found that the more I wrote my thoughts down, the more I wanted to read (apparently I just had to empty my head a bit first). It took about 6 months of chronicling my life and I could finally relax again and enjoy sitting and getting lost in my books. Now I keep both a regular diary for everyday life and stress, and a book diary of reviews and keeping track of what I have read.
I think what bothered me most was the fear that I would never love my favorite hobby again…it felt almost claustrophobic (so many books, so little time!).
@Roma – that feeling of enjoyment will come back! For me the important thing is not to force myself to read (I did what you tried to, too!), especially because I tell myself it’s good for me. I know when I feel like I’m punishing myself (like it’s taking nasty tasting medicine or something) then it’s time to give myself a rest. I do something else for fun or to get my mind off of things – and then when I find myself feeling more like it, I go back to the books. And then sometimes I can’t go back to the same books or genre – I have to pick something completely different. Last time what got me out of the blahs was rereading some old children’s books and remembering what used to make me laugh. Another time I put down some really dense lit and went with comedy, or put down a romance (that was bugging me more than I realized) and read history.
The hard part of these times for me is that books are my default enjoyment and so taking a break and using another media shakes up my schedule a bit – and is hard to get used to the sudden change from what’s usually a comfort. But then maybe the change is sort of what I need? (I think the answer’s usually yes!)
It happened to me in my last two years of university and persisted after I finished university. Maybe it was reading so many textbooks I didn’t care about for university, or it was just that in university I got a laptop and therefore discovered the internet. But suddenly I was finding it hard to open a book, when before I’d finish at least one book each day. Suddenly, I felt like there were so many other things to do rather than read.
I’ve mostly gotten over this now, but only by switching to audiobooks. I’m an artists so I listen to them while sketching, and so it overcomes by nagging feeling that I should be doing something else rather than reading. OTOH, I sort of of miss the days when I used to be able to just curl up with a good book and relax…
OMG, yes, I have lost my reading mojo–for romance. I’ve been not only a fan of romance for decades but more of paranormal romance until the last year when everything has begun to sound the same. I’m tired of the immediate fall into lust and jumping into bed, the vampires, werewolves, angels, demons and extreme sameness of so many romances. While I’ve found myself peering into the self-published ranks, I’m often very wary because of the lack of quality in so many–free or more doesn’t matter–lack of quality if lack of quality. I think this is why I’ve gone over to horror. And not even romantic horror. How’s that for a total switch? I want the action, the twisted stories, etc. Some are better than others but I find it easier to accept the poor quality in some in horror then I do in romance. I think it’s because I care so much about romance it really pains me–someone in the industry since the early nineties–to see how much things have changed and not always in a good way.
So yes, I feel your pain and hope to rekindle my love for romance some day.