bookworm

It’s not you, Book, it’s me: The Dreaded Reading Slump and How To Get Over It

~ fionareads ~ Leave a comment

I think that all of us readers have been there. When you are used to reading over 4 books a month, and suddenly, you can hardly bear to read a news article, never mind a novel.

It feels like it is all down to the book. First, you pick up a terrible book, and you don’t finish it. Then, you try another. That’s awful too! And another. They are all boring – nothing grabs you. It could be fantasy, romance, historical, non-fiction, anything. It doesn’t matter. Nothing will grab you. Because it isn’t the book, it’s you.

There are many, many reasons why one might have a reading slump. Lack of motivation, time, stress, anxiety, depression… So, what do we do? We do things that do not require the same level of attention – things we can finish quickly and not think about too deeply.

YouTube, TV shows, scrolling through Facebook, binge-watching Netflix. It’s terrible, isn’t it? And for some, sure, it might be totally normal. But for readers who read (and I mean, read read read) it becomes this depressing, odd, stagnant hole in your life and makes you feel weirdly guilty and not-quite-yourself. Having just come out of the longest reading slump of my life (Not an exaggeration – it was four months long, and torturous!) I created a list of things that finally helped me to get my reading mojo back…

Start Light

I often find that reading something very easy, funny and lighthearted is sometimes the best way to get yourself back into reading. Chick-lit is a great example – it’s fun, summery, and full of simple story lines that do not require too much thinking power. I can be a bit of a snob and don’t usually enjoy chick-lit, but it works wonders for a reading slump. Just getting yourself reading again – whatever it is – is a massive achievement, and it helps if you can have a giggle along the way! Chick-lit offers a form of escapism that is rooted in reality and full of funny anecdotes, beautiful settings and swoon-worthy guys.

Paige Toon is a brilliant one to start with (The Longest Holiday is simply divine, and Lucy in the Sky and Jonny Be Good are also excellent – they are escapism at it’s best – letting you get swept up in holiday romances, gorgeous rock stars, sandy beaches and surfer dudes)

Keep It Short

Don’t feel like you are ready to plunge in to a full-length novel, just yet? That’s totally fine! Sometimes, it might hinder you rather than help you, so I would suggest starting with some shorter stories first. They pull you back into the swing of reading, but don’t keep you for too long. Short, and sweet.

A recent page-turner that comes to mind is Sarah Winman’s Tin Man. It’s a heart-warming, lovely little book that will warm you from your head to your toes – and you can read it in a day!

Try a Different Angle…

Perhaps it is the act of reading that is stopping you from breaking your slump? If you are depressed, it can become almost impossible to focus on anything for too long – you become so demotivated, you can’t even bring yourself to open the book and read the words. Listening to an audiobook, however, is a very different experience to physically reading. You can listen on the tube, on the bus, at your desk, whilst you are driving. It’s the perfect solution!

If this still isn’t helping, another great invention is the Podcast. They have honestly been my saviour the past few months – stopping me from going stir crazy when I feel like I am numbing my brain with YouTube and Netflix. There are some interesting, intelligent, fascinating Podcasts out there – everything from Literature to Science to discussions on authors, fandoms (There are some brill Harry Potter & Game of Thrones casts – Game of Thrones The Podcast is one of my favourites) and the BBC also have some great documentary style discussions on different authors and time periods. I listened to an engrossing one about one of my favourite authors, Oscar Wilde, that inspired me to re-read The Picture of Dorian Gray, hence pulling me out of my slump! Most of them are only 30 minutes upwards, so it’s entirely possible to feed your brain without committing too much time!

Switch It Up

Before your slump, were you (let’s be honest) a bit too obsessed with YA Fantasy? (It’s an easy hole to fall in to…) or did you pretty much only read Thrillers? I find one of the best ways to break a non-reading period is to get stuck into a book of an entirely different genre. It will pull you out of your comfort zone, and make you read something completely unexpected and different to anything you have read before.

Goodreads is fantastic for discovering new books from genres you are unsure about. Or, even better, just step into Waterstones, and spend a couple of hours browsing. You might find something you would never have even thought of reading before! The Booksellers there are so informed they can offer some excellent recommendations.

Get Physical

Perhaps you only usually read on an ereader or iPad, or maybe you are just bored of seeing the same books on your shelves every single day?

A great way to reinstate your passion for reading is to rearrange your bookshelves, or start visiting libraries and bookshops, physically taking books off the shelves, reading the blurbs, perhaps reading a little of the inside. It can be extremely inspiring to realise how many different stories there are out there, and to physically hold them in your hands. Rearranging your bookshelves can be a big job if (like me) you have a lot of books, but it reacquaints you with books you had forgotten about, or books that were on your TBR that you never got round to reading…

What methods would you use to get yourself out of a reading slump? I would love to hear your thoughts!

Book Review – Strange the Dreamer

~ fionareads ~ Leave a comment

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The dream chooses the dreamer, not the other way around— and Lazlo Strange, war new-release-date-2orphan and junior librarian, has always feared that his dream chose poorly. Since he was five years old he’s been obsessed with the mythic lost city of Weep, but it would take someone bolder than he to cross half the world in search of it. Then a stunning opportunity presents itself, in the person of a hero called the Godslayer and a band of legendary warriors, and he has to seize his chance to lose his dream forever.

What happened in Weep two hundred years ago to cut it off from the rest of the world? What exactly did the Godslayer slay that went by the name of god? And what is the mysterious problem he now seeks help in solving?
The answers await in Weep, but so do more mysteries—including the blue-skinned goddess who appears in Lazlo’s dreams. How did he dream her before he knew she existed? and if all the gods are dead, why does she seem so real?

This book was heartbreaking and mystical and catastrophic and shattering and beautiful. It was the perfect fantasy novel. Laini Taylor’s world building is so tangible – God, I wanted Weep to be real. I wanted to walk through the halls of Lazlo’s library, and ride on horseback alongside Eril-Fane, and meet a blue-skinned goddess like Sarai. Laini Taylor’s ability to create magical, fantastical storylines is just breath taking. The world, the language, the characters… everything about this tale captivated me. The ending has broken me, in all the right ways. I need more of God-slaying Eril-Fane and assassins who are acrobats and armies of moths and a strange dreamer who reaches for his impossible dream, and grabs it with both hands…

Strange the Dreamer starts with Lazlo Strange – an orphan, a book lover, a dreamer, who has always been ostracized for being different, and has grown up constantly dreaming of the Unseen City. He is such a realistic, yet whimsical and loveable character; the perfect protagonist, and you empathise with him almost instantly. He immerses himself in his books, and lives amongst their pages, researching and learning every single thing there is to know about the Unseen City, Weep.

When Lazlo was a young boy, the name of the lost, unseen city was stolen from everyone’s minds. Not a soul could remember it’s name; the only word left in it’s place was Weep. Of course, if you dream hard enough, your wildest imaginings can come true, and the story truly sets sail once Lazlo is given the opportunity to adventure into the far reaches of every dream he has ever had, and find out the truth behind Weep and it’s inhabitants.

‘He read while he walked. He read while he ate. The other librarians suspected he somehow read while he slept, or perhaps didn’t sleep at all.’

Not only does Laini Taylor create feeling, beautiful, wholesome characters who make you feel like you are living their adventures with them, she also proves her place as the ultimate wordsmith of YA. The writing style of Strange the Dreamer seems to eclipse all her previous books: it is lyrical, tangible, poetic, almost to the point of too much. It hits that perfect sweet spot, without going overboard, and the imagery and pure imagination takes your breath away with every turn of the page. The very sentences themselves feel dreamlike and mystical – almost tricking you into believing you truly have been transported to another world.

Hidden within these pages we have never-ending libraries, mysterious journeys, hidden cities, ghosts and moths and goddesses with blue skin; mythical armies, warriors and God-slayers, star-crossed lovers and magic, nightmares, demons and salvation… In Weep, Laini has created a mystical world that leaps off the page and embeds itself into your very being. It is an addictive, descriptive, all-encompassing creation of a place that demands to be remembered, even after the book is closed. In Lazlo, Sarai, and Eril-Fane, you also meet characters with secrets, demons, dreams, and hearts filled with the capacity to love. Everything about the plot, these characters and their world is truly unique and so perfectly crafted.

The most prominent message I took from the story centers around race and how we, in a world currently ridden with racism and fear-mongering, detrimentally blame individuals of a certain skin colour for bad things that other people of that same skin colour have done; about how unaccepting the world is, as a society, of people who look different from ourselves. There is also a focus on the history of humankind and how younger generations are wrongly blamed for their ancestors mistakes. But this tale teaches us that we are not our ancestors, we are not our parents, and we should always strive to do better than the history behind us.

‘Sarai was seventeen years old, a goddess and a girl. Half her blood was human, but it counted for nothing. She was blue. She was godspawn. She was anathema. She was young. She was lovely. She was afraid.’

At it’s basest, Strange the Dreamer is also just about an orphaned underdog and a feared, blue-skinned girl who both just want the chance to be so much more. They speak to the hearts of all the dreamers, the bookworms, the misunderstood and the hard-done-by, and tell us that magic and dreams really can come true. Monsters, gods, hidden cities and armies of moths notwithstanding…

‘It was impossible, of course. But when did that ever stop any dreamer from dreaming?’

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