📚 Hey Kelly: Help! I'm in a reading rut.
Have no fear, your favourite local bookworm is here.
Hello! Today’s Hey Kelly is a lovely light one—how can this subscriber get out of a reading rut? Whether you’re in one yourself or just want to read more in general, you’ve come to the right place. Grab a cup of tea and pull up a seat next to me. It’s time to talk books.
I can guarantee that even the most prolific readers around you fall into a bit of a reading rut from time to time—myself included. The first time it happened, I was just wrapping up my undergraduate degree.
Studying English literature at university was great; I went on to do my masters in the same area. But boy oh boy, does it put you in a hell of a reading rut. You spend semester after semester trying to stay on top of an endless reading list, forcing yourself to finish books you just can’t get into (I’m looking at you, George Eliot’s Middlemarch). And when you’re finally free from the tyranny of deadlines and exams, and have time to read something you’ve *actually* chosen: nothing. Blank.
Come on! You used to read a book a day when you were young and full of optimism. What’s going on? Is this it? Are you just going to what, watch the movie versions of everything now? The horror, the horror!
Do not panic. I don’t quite know why we fall into reading ruts; maybe it’s something to do with a kind of reading burnout. Sometimes, when I read a real banger of a book, I struggle to find something to get into immediately after it—a bit like a book hangover.
Sometimes, it’s a matter of building a habit. You don’t have to read half a book in a day to be a reader; you’re a reader even if all you have time or energy for is a single page or short poem.
Without further ado, here are my tried-and-tested tips for getting back into your books.
6 tips for getting out of a reading rut
📖 Change it up
If you’ve been reading a lot of one genre recently, shifting to something different could do the trick. I get a little obsessed when I’m enjoying a particular genre or author, so this one has helped me before.
Reading loads of dystopian fiction? Try some sci-fi, like Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness. Or maybe a gothic classic like The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. If that’s not your bag, you might enjoy a little magical realism, which you can find in Before the Coffee Gets Cold by Toshikazu Kawaguchi. It’s refreshing!
📖 Make time for reading
Square away time just for reading. I do this for reading and writing; for a set amount of time, my options are:
A) Do the thing (read, write).
B) Do nothing.
And that’s it. No distractions on my phone, no doomscrolling or uploading a photo of books to my bookstagram (the illusion of productivity). It’s amazing how that self-induced boredom (shock, it’s okay to be bored sometimes and let your brain just wander) can nudge you into doing the thing.
📖 Build the habit
If carving out time for reading is a little much for you right now, that’s okay. What matters is that you’ve read something. One easy way to introduce more regular reading to your life is to keep a book by your bed and commit to reading one page before lights out.
Feel that itch to pick up your phone? Fight it, is all I can say. Switch it off if you need to. At the risk of sounding like your dear old ma: if you have 30 minutes to mindlessly scroll through the cesspit of content on social media, you have 15 minutes to read and let your body wind down a little more naturally. I said what I said. And I say this to myself regularly, so don’t feel attacked.
Oh, and being on your phone or laptop before bed impacts sleep quality. So, swapping scrolling for reading will not only help you read more, but you’ll wake up feeling more refreshed as an extra perk.
📖 Listen to a podcast or audiobook
We live in busy, busy times. Struggling to find time to sit down and read? Try incorporating audiobooks or podcasts into your routine.
You can listen to them during your commute, while you reluctantly go for a jog (me), or doing those boring as f*ck household chores. It’s like bonus reading. And yes, listening to a book does still count.
📖 Revisit an old favourite
Sometimes, revisiting books that you've loved in the past can rekindle your passion for reading. Rediscover the joy and revel in the nostalgia of familiar stories and characters, or explore other works by your favourite authors.
📖 Just take a break
You know, it's okay to take a break from reading if you're just not feeling it. Nobody’s going to know, and nobody’s going to tell you off for it.
There’s weird guilt around this for some reason, and seeing the good people of bookstagram finish-and-annotate book after book, speeding along towards their ‘read 100 books this year’ goal on Goodreads, just doesn’t help.
Go off and do other activities that bring you joy and calm, and come back to reading when you feel refreshed and ready to dive back in. It’s okay.
How did you get out of your last reading rut? What are you reading right now?