This isn’t the usual “aw shucks, summer’s over and I only read 5, 10, or 15 books” post I usually write around this time. This year, I didn’t even join the 20 Books of Summer event. I read seven books over June, July and August, but reviewed none.

Truth is, I haven’t been reading or reviewing much lately. In the style of the ubiquitous “how to read more” genre of post, I am trying to figure out how this happened.

First, let’s have a look at the data. You can look at my Goodreads if you want to know how many books I read per year (don’t mind the circa 2009 profile pic), but I’m using pages, a much more precise metric:

Correlation does not equal causation, and yet, I have identified a few contributing factors to the downward trend that started around 2018 (the 2016 dip is artificial, see my “35 books” challenge here.)

If you want to become a certified reading slacker too, try these hot tips:

• Subscribe to newspapers: In 2019, I subscribed to the print editions of The New York Times (Sunday), The Globe and Mail (Saturday), and The Edmonton Journal (daily) in a failed attempt to get off social media. I was probably reading more than usual each weekend, but not books. I have since let them all lapse to digital-only, so I can’t blame newspapers anymore.
• Live through a once-in-a-century event: let’s get this one out of the way. I lost several of my convenient reading contexts during Covid (e.g. audiobooks on the way to work, reading during kids’ activities) and spent a lot more time doomscrolling (I remember checking this website every morning). Some of these things have come back (commuting) and some have not (my kids’ activities mostly consist of watching movies from the Letterboxd Top 500 list and they don’t need me for that).
• Burn your books: It’s not so much the loss of the books; the night after our house fire in late 2023, I read on my phone in a hotel room (my version of roughing it). It was more that all my mental energy was suddenly applied to questions like “where am I going to live” and “how many dishtowels should I claim on insurance.” A solid book-a-week pace fell to about three-per-month and never recovered.  
• Switch up your bedtime routine: To paraphrase Jon Stewart in Half Baked: You ever read a book? You ever read a book…. on weed?” I started having a gummy before bed most nights in 2024 (after the fire, not unrelated). I can still read in bed, but it’s harder to maintain the thread of a story, so I end up rereading a fair bit the next day. I’ve contemplated writing a whole post on this for a long time. Hit me up if you have thoughts on reading while high! 
• Remove social pressure: In my peak reading years, I was accepting ARCs and pursuing review opportunities (i.e. outside of this blog). I was hosting read-alongs and joining reading events. I was posting about books on Twitter, Instagram, Youtube, and Goodreads, in addition to what I was doing here. All of those impose deadlines and social pressure… which is why I abandoned most of them. 
• Lose sight of the reason you started blogging: Reading in Bed was not conceived as a book blog, because I didn’t know what a book blog was in 2011. It was more of a challenge, or a way to track my progress with the 1001 Books You Must Read Before You Die (2007 edition). Perhaps I need to get back to my roots?

In real life (because research and data analysis is, in fact, what I do for work), after gathering all this quantitative data, I might suggest we do a little qualitative research or ethnography to validate these theories. Maybe keep a time diary, à la Laura Vanderkam (or Rivers Cuomo, who talks about maintaining an “attention budget” here), but hell, if I gather that much motivation, I should probably just use it to read and/or write! 

My concern is that in 2026 I’m only on track for about 9000 pages, a new low if we don’t count years in which I was having and caring for babies. Speaking of hormonal events, maybe it’s perimenopause, which, like the cannabis thing, probably deserves a stand-alone post about its effects on reading… stay tuned!