How To Fall Back In Love With Reading

College killed my love of reading. As early as I could I was reading for fun. Maybe that was due to my home-school upbringing, the lack of TV-watching in my home as a child, or just my genuine love of reading. More than likely it was a combination of all three. In short, I have loved to read since childhood. Then I went off to college. 

Suddenly everything I read was homework. I never chose to read anything, I was required to read. While much of what I did read in college I thoroughly enjoyed, and it changed my life in many ways, the difference between choosing what you read and being told what to read had a significant effect on me: reading was no longer a hobby. 

I found, as one and two and then three years passed after graduation, that I missed reading. But I did not know how to begin again. I would browse bookstores and come home laden with new books, only to put them tenderly on my shelf and never touch them again. Still feeling a sense of intellectualism from my college days, I would pick up the headiest nonfiction book on my shelf and take a stab at it, only to put it down moments later in favor of continuing my watch through of Friends. I was fighting a losing battle, but still I missed my old hobby.

Finally, I got lucky. I chose a book I had been wanting to read for a long time. I chose a book that was both accessible and entertaining. I chose Harry Potter. 

I did not read these books growing up, and had only read part of them in my early adulthood, before college took over. Now, I had bought the whole set and I found I could not put them down. Lunch breaks at work switched from listlessly scrolling social media to discovering exactly how many chapters I could get through in half an hour. Even slow days at the office meant I would crack a book at my desk during office hours. 

Why do I tell you this story? Because I don’t think this story is rare. You might be feeling the same thing. And I am here to tell you that if you miss reading like you used to, you can get back into it. All it takes is finding the right book to start. 

Don’t get me wrong, were I to re-read Harry Potter now, I would positively fly through them. Three years ago, though, it was slow work. It took me the better part of a year to finish the series, and once I was finished I hit another lull. But I persevered. 

Ultimately, the best advice I can give to anyone who is grieving having fallen out of love with reading is this: be patient with yourself. 

Yes– find the book that gets you excited to read again; but don’t set your expectations too high. Maybe you loved reading Dickens before, but don’t start with Dickens now. Maybe start with Twilight. And if you start Twilight and don’t like it, you don’t have to finish it. The book police doesn't exist. You get to choose what you like and don’t like, and life is too short to waste time reading books you don’t even enjoy just for the sake of finishing them. Put it down and start something new. 

The last thing I will advise is: take it slow. 

Even now, I consider myself a slow reader. I have friends who set goals of hundreds of books in a year, and that will never be me. But that is OK! Set yourself a reasonable goal to achieve. I found, once I had created the semblance of a habit, that telling myself to read 10 books in a year was more than achievable. It gave me space to read a variety of books, and I even exceeded my goal that year. The year after I did not meet my goal, but that was also OK. Because what is important is building the habit and doing what brings you joy– and that will look different day to day, year to year, person to person. 

Not sure where to start? Here are some recommendations: 

YA Fiction is easy to read and generally highly entertaining and fast paced. In this category I would recommend: 

Harry Potter, by J.K. Rowling

The Girl Who Drank The Moon, by Kelly Barnhill

Howl’s Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones

Fiction in general is probably a good place to start, so here are some non-YA options I recommend:

Piranesi, by Susanna Clarke

Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer

Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery

For those who prefer non-fiction, here are some recommendations for starting out:

Killers of the Flower Moon, by David Grann

Educated, by Tara Westover

I Am Malala, by Malala Yousafzai