The Trouble with Book Slumps
I'm not sure when it started, but I've been in a funk. A book slump. Before the pandemic, I ran the Young Adult and Middle Grade Bookclub on the Fediverse (Under the hashtag: YAMGBookclub).
But when 2020 came, everything understandably petered out and I was the only one seemingly capable of sustained interest or sustained reading. That was fine. One less duty I thought. At some point, the bookclub got revived again only to see the same problem again.
But I wasn't having the problem.
I managed to read a lot of books in 2020 and 2021. Probably because escapist literature was a comfort. I don't think it's changed, but no one really wants to write about the pandemic in their fiction unless they are writing a story about a pandemic, so I've seen the joke (sorry I don't remember who originally posted it) that all contemporary fiction has become Alternate Universe (Fan)Fiction where the Pandemic never happened. I think I've seen some fanfiction funnily enough that does deal with the pandemic, but I think two years in, no one wants to talk about being failed by their government, by their local communities.
Not to get too personal, but my city had a masking mandate. Angry people tried to get the mayor and city council recalled (I don't think the petition made it to the ballot) and eventually, spoiler: my state struck down ANY mask mandates as illegal.
I am thankfully not immuno-compromised, but I know people who are, and I feel I owe it to humanity to at least mask up when I leave my house. I am caught up on vaccinations, but that's not enough. But you didn't come here to hear the benefits of Masking.
This is a pandemic that is leaving many people disabled with Long Covid, partially because we as a society decided from the start that the disabled were expendable.
Sorry, that got a bit dark there. It needs to be said though, because my anger and sadness and grieving during the Covid-19 Pandemic is definitely part of this.
But 2022 has been different for me on a personal level. Though I have Seasonal Affective Disorder on top of Treatment-Resistant-Depression, aside from this Summer my Mental Health has been creatively well. From a reading perspective, I have managed to read 130 books as of typing this. At least 34 of those instances of reading were rereads, mainly of comics. Another 30 or so as of writing this were comics that I got via the library. Nagata Kabi is my most read author this year because I keep returning to her books. Izumi Tsubaki, Rachel Smythe, and Ngozi Ukazu are creeping up there too.
I tend to read non-graphic books via my kobo (though I have started checking out manga via the libby app), but looking at my StoryGraph stats, the vast majority of my reading this year has been via print.
Though I finally started noticing I was struggling with this around September. I was trying to read Cake Eater by Allyson Dahlin, a SFF retelling of Marie Antoinette's life and the impending French Revolution. It was a book that was Extremely my shit. I love hearing about royalty and nobility (Disclaimer: I am not a monarchist). I love the podcast Noble Blood and whenever the host Dana Schwartz is on the podcast You're Wrong About I basically squeal with glee and listen repeatedly. The only possible way this book could have been more my shit is if it had been a SFF retelling of Anastasia Romanov's life (or theoretical escape).
To be clear, the book Cake Eater is excellent. The author clearly did thorough research. I have basically zero complaints. But it was Hell to get through that book, and I want to be clear: that was not the book's fault. It was a problem with me that I had yet to diagnose.
To be clear, there were problems prior to this. Books I couldn't get into. Usually I don't mark that I've started a digital book unless I'm at least 10% through, so these didn't get categorized as DNFs. Plus, I hesitate to mark books as DNFs, preferring just to remove them from my lists, because DNF feels like a value judgment despite not necessarily being one.
The difference was after Cake Eater I took a look at myself, and said that I clearly needed a break from the entire categories of Young Adult and Middle Grade.
The only exceptions I made were for comic books and graphic novels, because I could still read them, and I usually borrow one based off of comments people make or if the art-style grips me. I don't take the time to second-guess which age category it belongs to.
So I've been (slowly) reading books aimed at Adults since about Mid-September. I always read some, I have a decent collection of romances, for example. I have not kept-up with my book journal, I think partially because I wanted to try to analyze what I liked or disliked about a book—A fine idea, except my brain rebelled against it.
It leaves me in this tough spot. As I've previously-mentioned in other entries, I have to schedule reading around ECT appointments due to memory loss, and to be clear, I do forget a decent amount about what I read. That's part of why I reread so much. If I take detailed notes, I tend not to, but part of me simply doesn't want to do that. I'm sure there's a way to solve the note-taking problem, I just haven't come up with a solution yet.
I've tried looking at articles on Book Slumps (Bookriot has a lot) but I couldn't find one with advice that seemed to help beyond “try comics”, or “Take a break”. I'm trying to think of it as a Juice Cleanse (though I don't see myself doing one of those) and that soon I'll be “purified” and back to Normal. Or “New-Normal”, as much as I hate that phrase.
I'm hoping by next year I'll be able to read YA again, as there's many titles (like Heavenly Tyrant ) that I'm looking forward to. I know I can't commit myself to that yet, though, as I don't know what this Winter has in store for me.
Feel free to at me on the Fediverse, please provide context though.