Late January, early February I found myself in a reading slump. Nothing unusual for me as I find myself having them four or five times a year and it is no big deal. I typically don’t feel like reading for a week or two and then suddenly I can’t read enough and plow through half the books on my TBR with a kind of fevered joy.

This slump, this one feels different. It may have began during the coldest, harshest part of winter but now it is sunny and warm and I still haven’t felt like reading for more than five minutes at a time. This thing has been sticking around for nearly two months, it feels like a disease of the non-COVID kind. Can you imagine that? Two months of not wanting to read.

It makes me feel like I am a fraudulent reader.

I know that is ridiculous because part of my very foundation is my love of reading. Finding a story that sucks you in and clamps onto your soul like a succubus is something that has brought me through many difficult times. But here I am, staring at all of the unread books on my shelves, lacking the desire to pick up any of them.

Seeing all these lovely, unread books on my shelf makes me sad. I hope that I can soon pick one up and plow through the pages like I did in January. My irrational fear is that maybe I’ll never love a book again. Maybe that is pandemic paranoia talking but the thought has swum through my mind on more than one occasion.

I’m not sure what the final purpose of this post was. I think maybe it was just to vent my frustrations. Maybe it was just a self-indulgent swim in the river of self pity. Whatever the reason is, I hope that you all are having better reading success than I am and that you are staying safe and healthy during this time of turmoil.