Hello readers! Today’s post is a little different. This topic has been on my mind for a long time. I don’t enjoy reading anymore. I do know what started the decline of my reading, but I can’t figure out why the joy of reading won’t come back for me.
In 2024, my entire life turned upside down. I can say now it is for the better, but at the time, it didn’t feel that way.
In January/February of 2024, my dog got sick and almost died. I kept reading book after book I hated, I separated from my husband, and I had the worst case of COVID I ever had. Because of all these things, I stopped reading.
I stopped reading for most of the year. I was in survival mode with everything going on. I even got COVID again in 2024 in October, but it wasn’t as bad that time.
In 2025, I was determined to have an amazing year, and I did. I went on vacation to see the Christmas Story house, which I wanted to do for almost a decade. I started college at the end of 2024, and I’ve done well in that. I’ve made either the President’s list or the Dean’s list every single semester since starting. I also met my now boyfriend at the end of the year.
Now it is 2026. I am 18 weeks pregnant with a very active baby girl. I have been having so much fun shopping for the baby, especially now that I know the gender. I’m still with my boyfriend. I have a little over a year left in college. I had over $9,000 in debt from my time being married, which I’ve paid off about $3,000 of. I mean, I’m overall doing very well.
For my reading, I was determined to get back into it in 2026. And I have, on a certain level. I made it a goal to read more consistently, because I thought that would help. I’ve almost read 30 books this year, which was the number of books I read in all of 2025.
However, I can’t get back the one thing that matters, which is the enjoyment. I thought because my entire life was better than it has ever been that I could be happy with reading again.
Sometimes I will think about how excited I am to read all day. Then, I sit down to read or put on an audiobook, and I will immediately want to do something else. Or, I will be listening to an audiobook and just forget about it.
I was recently reading a John Marrs book that I was loving. I wasn’t getting that feeling of not wanting to read while I was going through it. When I had about 30% left, I forgot I was reading it. About two weeks later, I remembered that I hadn’t finished it and did so.
I think a big part of the issue as well is that I’m just not loving a lot of the books that I’m reading. Even whenever I pick up authors that I know and love or just books that I think I will love, I don’t. The only book I can say that I absolutely loved over the past three years is probably the Nevermoor series.
Another issue is that I feel like I’m giving a lot more books three and two stars than four and five stars. But it’s not like I’m picking up random books and hoping they stick. 83% of the books I have read this year have been by authors I’ve read before.
One thing that I do believe I’m missing is the community aspect. I have always been pretty active on most book community social media.
One thing that has sort of died over the past few years is book clubs, readathons, and readalongs. Also, reading sprints on YouTube. I used to easily be able to find book clubs and readathons on a lot of book-related social media, including Twitter. I was even in a few book clubs on Instagram that had group chats. However, many of them ended.
For TikTok, I was the most active on that platform in 2023. Once everything happened in early 2024, I lost my passion for it. Even when I tried to come back, it felt like I wasn’t allowed to talk about any books that weren’t romance. If I didn’t talk about a romance book, no one would watch my videos.
These are things contributing to the overall slump I’ve been in. I have tried to participate in some readathons that still exist, and I’ve even been telling my boyfriend about the books I’m reading. Updating my boyfriend whenever I’m reading a book does get me excited to read more. But I was doing that with the John Marrs book and still forgot about it.
Something even crazier happened in 2026, which was that I read an entire book that I forgot I read. I put the last Stephen King book from the Bill Hodges Trilogy on my TBR in June, not realizing that I read it in March. How did I forget that?
I am the type of person who is cyclical with my hobbies. I have quite a few hobbies, but I seem to focus on one at a time, with less attention to the others. For instance, this blog. I go two months without posting here and there. I’ve done that for the entirety of the time that I’ve had this blog. So, I thought that when I lost my joy of reading in 2024, it would, of course, come back.
I have been actively reading more, going to the library every month, interacting with book community content more, buying books, and doing reading challenges and readathons again, but the JOY of reading isn’t back. I don’t know why, and I don’t know how to fix it.
But I’m not giving up!
Reading has been a big part of my life for 20 years. I got into reading at the age of 12. I strongly disliked reading before this. I don’t think that younger version of me is completely gone, just buried somewhere deep.
So what am I going to do about it? I have a few more ideas.
First, I want to stop reading so slowly. I think the reason I forgot about reading the John Marrs book is that I took too long to read it. I used to binge books over 3-4 days, depending on the page length. I let myself spread it across a week, which made me lose my momentum.
Second is to stop limiting my reading time. I have this habit where I do not allow myself to read if I haven’t done my college work for the day. I keep thinking I’ll be irresponsible and neglect my work. However, I have never done that one time. I am doing phenomenal in college. I have a 3.7 GPA at the moment. I also don’t let myself read after 9 P.M., and I can’t even give a reason for it. It’s silly.
Third, I have been preparing to do the 1000 books before Kindergarten with my baby. My boyfriend and I have been heavily buying books and movies for the baby when they get a little older.
We are planning to raise them on 90’s media for movies/shows. With books, I have a mix of educational and fun. I have been buying some I loved as a kid, and my boyfriend loved, along with bringing my stepdaughter’s old picture books out of storage. We are also doing Sesame Street as a theme, so PLENTY of those books as well. More than likely, I’m gonna update you guys as we do the challenge.
Fourth, I want to reread the book that made me a reader 20 years ago. I have a post I linked above about how I got into reading. In that post, I talk about how my love of horror movies led me to Stephen King’s books. At the time, his newest book was called Lisey’s Story. This is one that isn’t very well known by him, but it was the first one I read. I still have my old copy, but I thought about buying a new one because it’s very beaten up. I won’t be getting rid of that copy because it means a lot to me. However, I do think it would mean a lot to me to revisit where it all began.
I don’t know if any of these things will fix my problem. But I do know I am not done trying. I love books, buying books, anticipating books, just not reading them.
Happy blogging and bookish adventures! 📚🦒✨
This post was created by Allison Wolfe for www.allithebookgiraffe.com and is not permitted to be posted anywhere else.
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