I did not read 20 books this summer, and so can you
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!
Well, the first thing to say is that I’ve missed you.
And the second thing to say is that a house fire is right up there with traumatic events. I know that from personal experience and it wasn’t even my house, it was my mother-in-law’s, but I helped with the aftermath of course. So, yeah, cut yourself some slack.
Of course, yes, causation. But you’re really asking the question, why read at all. Blogging is just an add-on to reading, analogous to keeping a reading journal, but if conversations about books ensue (as distinct from writing into a dispiriting void) then blogging is an enjoyable add-on. But reading is the thing. An optional, obligation-free thing. A different world that gives you peace and succour or distraction from whatever ails you, and if it doesn’t, let it go. For a while, or forever. It is part of my identity now but it wasn’t when I was a young mother and it looks like that was true for you too, so we both have experience of that shift in identity.
But also…
I’ve been doing some long overdue housekeeping on my blog, printing out old reviews that hadn’t been included in my reading journals, and I am struck by how much I really enjoyed what I was reading a decade ago. 1001 Books; judiciously selected prize winners; new releases that came from publishers, other bloggers’ recommendations or just from bookshops. I was not reading resentful migrant memoirs or identity politics or novelists pontificating about world affairs as if they knew what they were talking about. I was really enjoying it in a way that seems a bit distant now, except when I ventured during #20Books into a couple of classics, books that are reliably worth reading. Now I find myself expecting to be disappointed because the writers I liked so much are being pushed aside so that there can be more diversity in publishing. I understand that, I welcome the diversity (except for the misery memoirs) but I miss the mid-career writers who wrote such interesting books. Some of them are there on my TBR because I didn’t get round to reading them back then, and I’m now saying no to more and more of what’s new and yes please to what’s already on my shelves.
All of which is a roundabout way of saying it might not be you, it might be the books.
All of this comment resonates with me, but your last sentence in particular, Lisa, is spot on.
I didn’t join 20 books of summer this year either Laura – without having any of your very good reasons above. I agree with everything Lisa says in her comment but I’m struggling to find books that I care enough about (a) to read and (b) to write up an opinion. Lets hope it is just the wrong books and the mojo will return. I also agree with Lisa in that we miss you.
My favourite blog format: the bullet list. I would read the heck out of both the posts you teased too.
I have been through much of what you identify here, Laura, with the exception of the house fire and reading while high. I have enough brain fog without chemical assistance.
For me, book subscriptions have had a weird negative impact on my reading. I took a couple out during the pandemic, to support the indie presses offering them and with a plan to maintain my reading (conveniently ignoring my massive TBR), without knowing my reading would be decimated by lockdown and anxiety. I’ve kept one subscription on and it has become my main source of new fiction, which is a bit like only eating own-brand food from a single supermarket. The publisher is great, I’ve read lots of things I wouldn’t otherwise have picked up, but not everything they publish is my cup of tea. It can make reading feel like a duty and for a while it stopped me reading as much as I used to.
Having a book subscription has also interfered with me going to bookshops and browsing the shelves and tables, asking a bookseller for a recommendation, borrowing things from the library, allowing serendipity to play its part. As Lisa has alluded to, book buying and reading used to be more fun. Now there’s so much derivative dross out there, it can feel hard to find the gems, which probably aren’t even being published or distributed by Ingrams or whoever because publishers and large chain bookshops want to easily pigeonhole things.
As for perimenopause, menopause and postmenopause, which is where I am now, each stage on this path fucks with concentration, motivation and patience. I would like to read your thoughts on this, if you can be bothered. Which I say as someone in her Zero Fucks Fifties who quite often can’t be bothered.
Oh, and for anyone menopausal, peri- or post-, I recommend Bridget Christie’s drama The Change. It’s glorious. Channel 4 player in the UK, BritBox or Prime elsewhere.
I absolutely sympathise, Laura; at times I lose motivation over not just bookblogging but reading, and though I am prone to doomscroll I haven’t had the same kind of trauma that discombobulates one’s whole self as you have.
All the best Laura – I hope you are okay, it seems like you have gone through a lot and I love your graph!
I have gone through phases with reading, some where I dropped it for bad reasons (too much work and stress) and others for good reasons (too much getting out hiking and travelling). But I always come back because I remember reading the 2007 Booker Prize Long List. Note the long lists since then have been less to my taste, but I recall the love of finding that amazing book and that year in 2007 travelling round discovering author after author – fantastic books.
But I agree with you on all the points you make, and while I may commit to challenges and goals, they are all for fun and I don’t feel pressured by them. I may or may not complete them, and I reserve the right, even in the book club I started to ditch a book if I don’t want to read it. Finally I made my blog for me to look back on and go ‘what did I think about that book?’ – and I am SO sad I didn’t start this earlier. Making it more about ‘me’, has helped me continue to enjoy reading and blogging. Lol – I sound selfish, but reading is like that for me. The comments from others on my blog are like icing on the cake – being able to talk about the books I love 😀
Good luck on your journey…
You’re still reading a lot more than the average adult! We put so much pressure on ourselves as bloggers/readers. It’s natural for all aspects of life to have some ebb and flow built in — but I can understand how you’re feeling, as a big drop would have me wondering who I was. Have you been enjoying what you’ve read recently? If so, that can be enough. You don’t have to write about the books. And maybe you’d actually be more likely to if you had problems with them? In any case, I hope that your reading mojo returns and, when it does, you tell us about which book(s) had the magic!