This article is written by a student writer from the Her Campus at Holy Cross chapter and does not reflect the views of Her Campus.
I do love to read, yet I’m hardly ever consistent with it. I find myself reading five books one month and then not opening a book for four months after that. I used to be confused as to why I did this, but I now choose to blame the reading slump. The reading slump is something that is so easy to fall into. When I’m reading a book I love, I want to do nothing else but keep flipping through the pages. However, I eventually get to a book that I find less interesting, and then slowly stop reading entirely.
I’m currently in my peak of reading for this year so far, so here are my main tips to get back into reading.
- Get through the first 60 pages or so within your first sitting of reading the book. The beginning of a book is always the hardest to get through. It’s easy to read the first 20 pages and not be invested in it at all because there is so much setup going on. However, once you can get through the background information, it’s so much easier to want to pick up the book. Once I know the characters, I want to learn more about them. Therefore, I highly recommend reading a big chunk of the book to start.
- Dive deep into the book after finishing it. Almost every book I have read has some sort of strong fan base for it online. I’m always excited to finish a book just to write my review on Goodreads, and then get to read all the thoughts that other people had on the book. I’ll even go on TikTok and look up videos about the book to hear other people talk about it. It makes reading feel much more like a book club, rather than a solo activity.
- Read a book because you are interested in it, not because other people find it interesting. This is something I struggled with for so long. When I first started reading, I found myself buying a lot of classics, non-fiction, and just overly serious books. However, I’ve learned that honestly I don’t usually like those types of books. Most of the things I read are relatively silly, but those are the books that I enjoy. Of course, I still believe there is importance in reading different genres to learn more about other subjects and question perspectives, but I don’t think every book you read has to be that.